


Time Keeps on Slippin'

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Series: Other Constants [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lena Oxton has all the time in the world. But never where it counted.</p><p>A break in her accelerator might change that.</p><p>(All ships listed besides Widowtracer are background ships)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PAST

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! This takes place in the same verse as "Like the River" but since all the other ships are background, I didn't tag them. The side ships are only implied though, so if you got a NOTP in the bunch, it shouldn't bother you (for the record, Mchanzo, Gency, Past Reaper76). Hope you guys enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our main ship here is Widowtracer and the others are very much background/implied. Tagging for them just in case.

It always started the same. A shot in the wind. The sound of an agent down. And then-

“ _ Hello chérie. _ ”

Lena was sure if anyone ever called her that ever again, her first reaction would be to grab the nearest blunt object and prepare to go to war. 

The mission was a usual one. Simple, Lena thought, nothing to worry about but the cold temperatures and the howl of the wind. Securing the old Talon outpost was almost like clockwork, and by the time it was done, Lena was ready to take a nap or seven. 

“You know,” Genji said, stretching as they headed up a pair of stairs. The cyborg was always cheery after a job well done. “If you wanted to race-”

A gunshot. Genji ducking just in time for it to only get his arm. A flash of sparks. Genji diving off the stairs towards cover and-

“ _Hello_ _ chérie _ .”

Lena didn’t even have to think before grabbing her guns and sprinting off towards where the bullet had come from.

“Genji is down-” She said reporting as the world seemed to slow down around her. She always hated this part, the moment before real time became her time, before she truly entered the slipstream. At least when she was going forward. It reminded her of vanishing piece by piece in the cockpit, fragmented away. “Just his arm, he’ll be fine, but our sniper is still live.” The world slowed more, the proper slipstream now. Talking into her com would likely come out as static. 

Another bullet rang out. Lena didn’t even have to duck, sidestepping it with ease. Easy to avoid something fast when you were faster. She darted up a pair of crates, using her speed to propel her on a nearby building and when she caught the sight of purple, she forced a smile.

Here, she was Tracer. Not Lena Oxton. Tracer. The hero. Smile wide, kiddo. Heroes didn’t have off days.

Widowmaker turned just in time for the catch phrase.

“Cheers love! The cavalry is here!” 

And then is began again. Tracer vs. Widowmaker. Let them dance.

It could be described as dancing, Lena thought as she dived under Widowmaker, shooting furiously. The kind of dance those spiders who ate their mates made. Widowmaker was fast, dodging just in time, and when Lena struck out to throw her feet out from under her, a gas bomb flew in her face. She choked falling to her knees.

“Too slow,  chérie .”

Lena dodged just in time as Widowmaker took a shot at her head. She would have taken another, she thought, if it wasn’t for the arrow that flew past the assassin’s head. The sound of very angry Japanese cursing.

Lena had to give it to Hanzo; for a guy who killed his brother once, he was terribly protective of the man now.

The dragons didn’t come, Widowmaker grappling off to another building before he could let them loose. Lena recovered her breath and she got to her feet, almost heaving. She heard the archer walk up behind her.

“Are you alright?”

“Just a tad winded!” She waved her hand, ignoring the look of concern from the archer. “It’s fine. I have strong lungs. All the running, you know?”

Hanzo stared at her for a moment. She didn’t move, waiting for him to either work up the nerve to whatever he wanted to say or decide against it. He went with the former, tilting his head to the side, a slight frown on his lips.

“What did she call you?”

Lena’s throat felt tight for a moment. She ignored the sensation. She couldn’t dwell on this. Not when flight with reinforcements would be here soon.

“ Chérie .” Hanzo kept looking at her. “It’s a nickname.”

“I knew that. I am curious why she has one for you.”

Someone hadn’t been informed of his Overwatch  history then. Her history. They were too intertwined at this point, her and Overwatch, Overwatch and her. Lena wondered if she’d ever be able to separate the two. She doubted it, given the accelerator on her chest. 

“We go back.” She ignored the raise of Hanzo’s eyebrow. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated?”   


“Enough for six novels and a film adaptation.” The archer’s gaze didn’t waver from her. “Look, anyone can tell you all about it. How about we check on your brother? I’m sure he’ll be peeved to learn he missed all the heroics.”

That got Hanzo to leave off, heading for the roof edge. He landed on the fire escape and Lena closed her eyes as she heard him walk down the stairs. She hoped someone would be able to answer his questions about Widowmaker so she didn’t have to. 

She was so tired of telling that story.

“Cheers, Amélie,” she whispered under her breath before walking to the edge of the rooftop herself.

Even though she knew Widowmaker was long gone, some part of her felt like spider eyes were watching her. 

* * *

 

Lena was fresh blood in Overwatch’s pilot program when she met Amélie Lacroix.

She met her husband first, her commander and a former pilot himself. Gérard Lacroix was a good commander, proud but not enough to ignore his own mistakes, dedicated but not to the point of losing sight of the world around him. Lena liked him at once, with his deep laugh and French accent. 

She spent two months under his command before she became his friend. She spent another two before he invited her over to dinner with his family.

Lena didn’t know what to expect when she arrived at the small flat. They were stationed in London for the time being, the new pilots trained there, and she took a second before knocking on the door. A small dog could be heard from behind the oak, Kip or so the commander had told her, and when the door opened, Lena was met with Amélie Lacroix in the flesh.

Looking up at her commander’s wife Lena realized two terrible things.

The first was that her commander’s wife was terribly hot. Ungodly attractive, really. Just Lena’s type: tall, brunette, with a smile that implied it could be as sharp as a knife or as soft as a feather. The kind of girl she would hit on first at any bar.

The second, was that her commander’s incredibly hot wife, was also French.

She was so fucked. 

“Amélie,” the woman said, greeting Lena with a polite handshake. Her voice was gentle, rather sweet, and Lena felt her insides twist. Oh, God, she was so gone. 

“Lena,” she stammered out. The blush that hit her face a few seconds later was terribly bright. “Lena Oxton! I’m-”

“You’re the pilot?” Lena nodded. “Gérard has told me a lot about you.”

“He has.”

“Mostly that you won’t stop talking.” Amélie tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid I don’t see it now.”

_ Oh God _ , Lena thought. This was how she died. Scared shitless of talking to a beautiful woman five years her senior. 

**“** Amélie,” Gérard came to her rescue, coming in to wrap his arm around his wife’s waist. She leaned forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Please do not scare my recruits. Especially my talented ones.”

Lena’s blush worsened. “I’m-’

“Please Oxton, you’re the best pilot in the fleet. And the youngest. I’m only speaking the truth.” He turned to Amélie. “Amélie likes to fly. I’m sure she’d love to hear about it.”

“I would.” Amélie smiled at that, taking a step back so Lena could walk inside. “I wanted to be a pilot when I was a girl, actually. I’m sure anything you tell me will be enthralling.”

Lena followed her inside, speaking up about her recent flight runs with Overwatch’s new planes. Amélie did turn out to be fascinated with the topic, asking a wide variety of questions, the terrier her and her husband shared resting on her lap for most of the conversation. She knew what she was talking about, Lena noticed. As the night went on, she went from the scary wife of her boss, to someone easy to talk to. A friend maybe. By the time she left, hugged by both Lacroixs, the terrier sniffing at her heels, she felt almost at home. It was her first time visiting their house. It would not be her last.

That would happen years later, when she arrived to find Gérard’s blood stained body on the kitchen floor, the terrier whimpering from the doorway and Amélie nowhere in sight. 

* * *

 

Hanzo never came to talk to Lena about Widowmaker after that mission. In fact, when he saw her the next day, he apologized for intruding. It was a quick apology, stiff honestly, but Lena didn’t mind. He was new. He would make mistakes.

She had, when she first started out. Far too many to count. 

“I heard you had a run in with our favorite sniper,” Winston asked her later, reviewing the mission. Jack had already left, he hated any semblance of being in command now, and Lena was happy for it, if only to avoid him commenting on this conversation. “Are you alright?”

“Not a scratch on me.”

Winston looked at her over his glasses. She called it his “professor” look. He hadn’t appreciated the joke. “That’s not what I meant, Lena.” 

“I know it wasn’t. Won’t you let me deflect?”

“That isn’t healthy.”

“Are you a doctor as well as a scientist now?” Her quip had more bite than she intended and she leaned back on the workbench, blowing back her bangs. “It isn’t her, anyway. Does it matter?”

“You were friends. With her and her husband.”

_ We were family _ , Lena wanted to reply, but she bit her tongue. There was no use dwelling on the past. She knew that as much as everyone else. Instead she looked at Winston and shook her head.

“Amélie and I were friends. Spidey tried to shoot me over a dozen times last month and doesn’t own a winter jacket. There’s a difference.” She lifted her chin, seeing the question in Winston’s eyes. “I know the difference.”

Winston pushed up his glasses. Nodded. Conversation over, heart to heart done. He knew not to beat a dead horse. It was part of the reason Lena liked him. “Have you heard who McCree has been training with?”

Lena let herself sink into the familiarity, forgetting a cold stare and cold skin. She crossed her arms and tilted her head.

“Are you gossiping with me, Winston?”

“I’m speculating. It’s a line of scientific-”

“Gossip.”

“Lena.”

“Oh come on, Winston. What is it?”

As he told her, along with gossip about Genji’s recent shopping habits and Hana’s late phone calls in the middle of the night, she let herself forget about the mission and sink into the present. 

* * *

 

The day Lena got her accelerator, the day her nightmare ended and she found herself in the real world once more, she spent the night at the Lacroixs.

Gérard insisted, in the room when she’d become physical once more. He’d been there for a long duration of her time living on the fringe of time, despite no longer being her commander.  Amélie had stopped in too, Lena remembered, telling jokes to her as she tried hard to stay in the present.

It had been easy, to pretend to have spirits while the slipstream had her. To pretend this was another adventure, that she was fine. To tell jokes with Winston and chatter away.

It had been easy to wear a mask, when no one could see her face for long.

When the accelerator had been put on, she’d cheered. The rest of the day in the lab she’s spent hugging those she could get her hands on, savoring the feeling of being solid. When Gérard had driven her to his house, she’d taken extra time on the stairs, and almost swung Amélie around in their corresponding hug. Laughed when Kip settled onto her lap.

It was only later, when she’d woken up to the flicker blue glow of the accelerator in the dark guest room, that reality set in. 

She would be like this forever. Attached to the world with this thing on her chest. Never free of it, the free of the reminder, never free of the blue glow.

For the first time since her ship began to vanish, Lena cried. No, that was incorrect.

Lena sobbed.

It was Amélie who came to comfort her, opening her door five minutes after she started crying. She didn’t hesitate before sitting next to Lena on the bed, and pulling her into a hug, Lena’s face tucked into her shoulder. Ruing the beautiful nightshirt she wore. 

“I could disappear,” Lena said between sobs, clutching onto Amélie for dear life. Clutching onto this world for dear life. “I could disappear again and this thing is keeping me here-”

“You’re not going to disappear.” Amélie pulled back to look Lena in the eye. Tilted up her chin. “I will not let you. Gérard will not let you. Winston will not let you.”

“But-”

“Chérie-” Amélie said, using a nickname that would last long after her. “You are here. With me. You are safe. I promise.”

Lena would fall asleep there ten minutes later, gripping onto Amélie’s waist for dear life.

When she woke in the morning, the woman would still be there, running her fingers through her hair as sunlight began to pool through the window.  
  


* * *

 

Widowmaker wasn’t Amélie.

Lena knew this. She read the papers Winston pulled, the information Ana gave her. She knew that the woman she once met all those years ago was no longer there, nothing left but a puppet for Talon to use. There was no undoing the programing. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew that if given the chance, Widowmaker would kill her, no hesitation.

But sometimes, she wondered. If only for the questions Widowmaker would sometimes ask, when she chased her across rooftops. 

_ “How’s the girlfriend?” _

_ “Is that Indian place still open?” _

_ “How is the dog?” _

Lena didn’t answer the questions anymore. She had at first, but when she learned Widowmaker never remembered the queries for long, she decided against it. When Widowmaker decided to probe her old life, it was only in passing not genuine interest. She only asked questions she already knew the answers to. But that didn’t stop Lena from answering them in her head. 

_ “She dumped me after I vanished. You were there. I sobbed into the ice cream you bought for almost an hour.” _

_ “It is and it’s gotten terrible under new management. Gérard would have hated it: they stopped serving the special for something bland. It’s not even spicy anymore!” _

_ “Kip is old but fine. He had to get his hip fixed last year when a motorcycle hit him. He walks fine, but he has a limp. We’re no longer the speedy team.”  _

She didn’t ask Widowmaker questions, at least the ones she wanted answers to. She only fired off banter these days, questions meant to annoy, questions meant to prod and poke. She knew what happened if she asked anything genuine: “ _ why would you do this _ ”, taught her that much. So she held back. Her questions weren’t for Widowmaker anyway. They were for Amélie. 

_ “Did Gérard know? Before it happened? Did he have a chance?” _

_ “Why did you leave the dog alive? Had it not set in yet?” _

_ “Do you know who I am?” _

_ “Do you remember Gérard ?” _

_ “Do you remember me?” _

_ “Did they let you remember anything?” _

After any mission where Widowmaker made it off into the wind, Lena would ask the same questions to the night sky.

She never got the answers she wanted.

* * *

 

On a Tuesday night, Overwatch threw a talent show.

That wasn’t quite the correct terminology. It was more like, Lena forced a talent show right after dinner to force group activity that didn’t consist of being shot at. 

A handful of her comrades protested, but the enthusiasm of a few managed to win them over eventually. Reinhardt went first, determined to show his “feats of strength” and soon enough, Zarya had joined him, both of them walking around the base trying to lift the heaviest items they could find.  _ Lúcio  _  showed off his skate tricks, a surprise for those who were expecting music, and when Hana tried on a pair of her own and managed to keep up with him, no one could hide their shock. Winston attempted to juggle some eggs (which ended up all landing on Morrison). In the most impressive show of the night, Genji danced, pulling in Angela to perform some moves that were clearly rehearsed. 

“You’re gonna have to teach me those!” Lena yelled after the dance was done, lifting up her hand for a high five. Genji slapped it back. The metal to skin contact hurt, but Lena was used to it. She smiled at Angela. “You too, Angie. When I go clubbing next, I’m borrowing that twirl.”

“We’re an underground organization,” Morrison said from his corner. He’d cleaned the eggs off his suit, but he was still sulking. Which really, was his default attitude some nights. “You can’t go clubbing.”

“I can if I wear a disguise.”

“You have a glowing particle accelerator on your chest.” 

“That’s what baggy jumpers are for! Or McCree’s clothes!” She glanced over to McCree. “Jesse? You got a serape I can borrow? Something in my color?” 

McCree gave her a thumbs up right as Morrison groaned. 

The night went on, more alcohol being consumed as the hours ticked down. Hanzo and McCree got into a competition over darts, and Lena almost burst out laughing at the look on both their faces when Ana swooped in and trashed them both. As the night moved to a close, everyone was tired, warm, and content. The best outcome, in Lena’s opinion.

They were all tightly wound here in Overwatch. For a reason, sure, but too much tension could kill you. They needed to relax every once in awhile. And if Lena had to force monthly talent shows for that to happen, so be it.

“What’s your talent, Lena?” Hana said, after she’d beaten Genji in what looked to be the 5th round of their video game. The cyborg was still sitting on the sofa, his lights red instead of their usual green as he stared at the television. It looked like being a sore loser was a Shimada family trait, omnic training or not. 

Lena looked down at the youngest member of Overwatch. She honestly hadn’t thought of performing herself, since Genji out shown any attempt she could make at dancing. And she had a feeling that being able to pop her gum without getting any on her face wouldn’t be seen as a talent. She took a sip of her drink, pondering it for a minute, and before she could see it coming, Mei bumped into her. Lena dropped the glass, and watched as it shattered on the floor.

“Aw shit-” It hit Lena at once. Her talent. Hana wouldn’t have seen this before: she wasn’t around when Lena first learned she could do this. Before anyone could say another word, Lena reached down, Grabbed a piece of the shattered glass. And fell back into the slipstream.

Going back in time in the stream was different than going forward. It was more natural, like falling back into a river with a current and letting it carry you away. Softer almost, less jarring than going in the other direction. Lena watched as her personal world rewound on itself. As the glass’ personal world, even the shards she wasn’t touching, torn back in time with her, rewound on itself.

It was hard to go backwards far, just like it was going forward. The slipstream always threw her out after a few seconds, not willing to let her screw with time for much longer. Not that it mattered: Lena only needed three seconds at most. She felt herself eased out of the stream, the blue glow of the world fading away. Looked down at her hand.

The glass, in one piece, rested there.

“Wow,” Hana said, leaning forward to get a better look at it. It wasn’t quite the same, no, unlike when Lena rewound, objects didn’t work quite the same. They carried memories of the timeline they’d escaped, scars from a time that never was. In the glass itself, almost if etched there, were lines were the fractures would have been, the glass itself tinted a little blue. Hana tilted her head and looked at Lena. 

“Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Old girlfriend’s place. Broke one of her pieces of china. Rewound in a panic and found out the plate went with me. She wasn’t too impressed though.” In fact, she’d promptly freaked out, clearly not used to the superheroics part of dating a superhero. The relationship hadn’t lasted even a week after the incident. 

“Can you do that with my broken X-Box?”

Lena laughed. “If you broke it a few seconds ago, yes.” Hana grumbled, clearly wanting a different answer. “It gotta be stuff I can hold onto and drag with me. Can’t exactly carry your mech in either.”

Hana shook her head. Lena could see the battle plans she’d envisioned dying away. After a moment she spoke. 

“Can you do that with people?”

Lena paused before answering, thinking it over. That was a tricky answer. Tricky enough, that Winston had given her three separate lectures on the topic with slides when they were first figuring out her abilities. 

“I can, but it’s dangerous. People have to be linked with me, not to be dragged into the stream on their own. Winston said I’m something like an anchor.” She bit her lower lip. “If I have a good grip on them, it’s fine, but if I don’t and I let them go, they fall into the stream proper. On their own. Which is messy business.”

“Messy?”

Lena thought of months left in limbo, where the world wasn’t solid and time refused to make sense. Where she was a maid one moment and a pilot the next. Where she shifted from five, to thirty, to seventeen, to sixty, and back to twenty two again. Where, after escaping, she kept three watches on her for weeks, if only to make sure time hadn’t lost its grasp on her again.

“Yeah. Messy.”

Hana didn’t ask any questions after that.

* * *

 

Lena pulled the rewind trick on one of Amélie’s plates once. Amélie thought it delightful, and put it with her best china.

“It’s beautiful, chérie,” she’d said, when Lena asked why. “Strong despite what has happened to it. Why wouldn’t I want to keep it?”

And kept it she had, until Talon came by, and took her with them.

(The plate now rested in Lena’s room, collecting dust underneath her bed)

* * *

 

Two months after the talent show, Lena got shot in the shoulder.  She’d been snagged in a trap and as she’d escaped, a bullet had ripped through the air, into her shoulder. Angela had patched it up well, thank you modern medicine, but the pain still lingered hours later. 

She had a feeling who shot her. The bullet Angela carved out, one from the sniper rifle Widowmaker preferred, only made it official. 

“She is targeting you,” Ana said, stopping by her room later, face deathly serious. “Do you know why?”

“Probably because she can’t hit me. I’m ruining her “one shot, one kill”, slogan.”

“Lena-”

“Does this make me her nemesis? Because I’ve never had a nemesis-”

“Lena,” Ana’s voice had no room for argument. “This is serious.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” Lena leaned back in the hospital bed she was in, taking a deep breath. “Look, she’s likely pissed cus I keep bollocking her operations.”

“Are you sure that is it?”

Lena looked up at the ceiling lights. They gave off a yellow glow, not a blueish one, and she was thankful for it. “Does it matter?”

“If we have a motive, we can now how to avoid having it happen again.”

“Ana-”

“Lena.” A hand rested on her shoulder. Lena looked down at Ana so she could see her face. “I might be old, but my memory works fine. I know that you were friends.” Her good eye seemed to look Lena right through. “Do you think that might have something to do with it?”

Lena thought back to seeing Widowmaker for the first time. To seeing a gun in her former friend’s hands, to watching her blank eyes. She could still remember the assassin’s expression when she’d seen her for the first time.

No recognition. Nothing. Just an assassin and her target. Widowmaker and Tracer.

Not Lena and Amélie.

“No,” Lena said at last. “I’m sorry Ana, really, but, that’s not it. Trust me.”

Ana said nothing, only reached up as if to touch her eye patch. 

Sometimes, Lena thought, it was hard to remember that Widowmaker had left scars on them all.

* * *

  
Lena was the one to rescue Amélie. After Talon.

She remembered her relief, when she found she was okay, alive. How she’d held her close as they escaped the building, guns blazing about her. She could recall her talk of seeing Gérard again, word for word, her promises of what they could do when Amélie was recovered. Talk of movie nights, dinner with the rest of Overwatch, breaking plates just to watch Lena replace them.

When Gérard arrived to take Amélie home from the hospital, Amélie had said only one thing to Lena in return since being rescued.

_ “Be careful.” _

It took two weeks and a body on the floor, for Lena to realize what she had been warning against.

* * *

 

The first time Lena pulled someone into the slipstream with her, it was entirely by accident.

It was on a mission, a mission that had gone terribly south. Everything was in ruins, the payload in the wind, Talon’s agents swarming the entire area armed to the teeth. Genji had been injured, she knew, she saw McCree and him limp off with sparking robotic limbs and  Reinhardt had lost a lot of blood, his armor cracked right in the middle. The call for a retreat was abrupt, Jack’s scream for it still echoing in her ears, and as Lena darted around a corner, she hoped Winston had brought his tools with him on this run.

The crackling noise that came from her accelerator, damaged with a bullet that skimmed the side, could be anything but good.

She kept the panic at bay, focusing on the task at hand. She could freak out later, safe in the base, or lost in the slipstream. Until then, Tracer, fearless Tracer, would take priority over terrified Lena. Keeping out of the slipstream was hard, the pull constant, and despite the temptation, she refused to fall into it. If she did, who knew if she’d be able to come back out.

She turned another corner, then leaped onto a fire escape to make it to the rooftop. Getting out of sight would help, especially when her accelerator was so easily noticed. Taking note of the recall point, she ran forward, leaping over buildings and onto rooftops. It felt more dangerous without the accelerator to rely on, and she desperately hoped she wouldn’t trip. 

“ _Hello chérie_ -”

Lena only had a second to duck before a bullet flew over her head.

“Not now,” she said, her hands bleeding from the impact to the ground. “Not now-” Another shot rang out and she ducked to the side, looking up. There, two buildings away, red lights from a sniper mask. She couldn’t outrun her, not now. The spider had her. Either she fought, or she accepted being trapped in its web.

“Tracer here-” she said, getting to her feet, pressing the com. There was plenty of chatter going through that she’d turned out previously, something about McCree, and she hoped they would all be okay before she spoke next. “Widow sighted. I have to engage. Tell Winston my accelerator is broken and to bring a spare to the corner of Cross if I don’t show up to recall.” 

“Lena!” And there was Jack. She took a deep breath, tuning him out.

“Good luck, boys.”

She ran. Taking out her pistols felt like second nature at this point and when she jumped a rooftop she ignored the feel of the pull of the slipstream. Another bullet passed and she barely dodged it. As she landed on the rooftop with Widowmaker, she emptied her clip in one round.

No hits. Widowmaker was fast. Aiming to take another shot. 

Lena didn’t think. She forgot about the break in her accelerator, the danger of moving with it. Instead, she darted forward. Grabbed Widowmaker’s shoulders. Yanked her to the side as Widowmaker tried to fire a round into her chest. Fell into the slipstream, easy as falling under the water of a deep pool.

Widowmaker went with her. 


	2. Present

Time in the slipstream moved differently without the accelerator to anchor her. 

It was heavier, an almost physical weight, wrapping around her, cold and unforgiving. For years, she had tried to describe it, how it felt to be unanchored, and now, stuck in it again, she still could find no words that fit. It was too loud and too quiet, the sounds of her past and present colliding in the air around her. The scream of Morrison over the com. The quiet of her old apartment when she was only a pilot. Winston’s laugh when he found a science joke that amused him. The hum of the radiator in a room of the Swiss HQ that no longer existed. 

Here she was. Past and present. Lena and Tracer. 

And across from her. Past and present. Amélie and Widowmaker. 

She wasn’t holding onto Lena anymore, in free fall as well. Lena could hear her own timeline around them if she listened hard enough. Kip’s bark at the door. Singing in French to a song she didn’t know. The chatter of Talon as Amélie screamed in the background.  Gérard’s laugh, light and free.

They floated there for what felt like days. Maybe weeks. It was hard to tell in the time stream without something anchoring you to the present. Lena felt her hair grow long, then short again. She watched as Widowmaker’s skin turned from lavender, to pale, to lavender again. Weapon to woman, woman to weapon.

The world started to whirl back into focus. Lena heard a crackling noise, a harsh sound compared to the whispers of the past around her, and looked down. Her accelerator was coming back, blue light beginning to hum. She planted her heels, feeling solid ground. 

“Lena.”

Widowmaker. Reaching out for her, her fingers spread. Eyes wide with fear. 

Lena didn’t think. She didn’t think of Widowmaker, or of Talon, or of the lies she told about being able to separate her ghosts from her current reality. Instead, she reached out. Laced her fingers in Widowmaker’s. Yanked.

For a moment, one brief second, they were still. Hand in hand, Lena and Widowmaker, Tracer and Amélie. Lena could hear their timelines blend together, a song of their lives she could never forget echoing around them.

_ “You get this feeling when you get high enough up, it’s like actually flying-” _

_ “Mostly that you won’t stop talking.” _

_ “I could disappear.” _

_ “You are safe. I promise.” _

_ “I’m sorry bout the plate-” _

_ “Why wouldn’t I want to keep it?” _

_ “I got you. We’re going home. We’re going home and you’re gonna be fine-” _

_ “Be careful.” _

_ “Cheers, love.” _

“ _ Hello, chérie. _ ”

The second ended. The fell out of the slipstream in a heap, the roar of the world around them vanishing. Lena winced as her left arm scraped against the pavement. She heard Widowmaker let out a grunt as well-

Widowmaker. 

Lena quickly pulled her hand away from the assassin, who was now getting to her feet next to her. Widowmaker was staring at her, eyes wide, shaking. Like she was cold. Lena reached for her guns, determined to get a grasp on a weapon, but she found they were lying across the rooftop. Along with Widowmaker’s sniper rifle.

Lena curled her hands into fists. She was in no shape for a fistfight; with the stream still roaring in her ears, all she wanted was to get her accelerator repaired and hide away until time made sense once more. But she’d be damned if Widowmaker managed to kill her-

“Lena?”

Tracer froze, staring at the assassin. Her shaking was getting worse. She looked almost pale, glancing at Lena, the accelerator, then herself. Lena watched as her gaze lingered on her hands.    


“Widow-”

She didn’t finish. Widowmaker dove away from her, grabbing her gear. Lena dove towards her equipment as well, ready to return heavy fire, but it never came. Widowmaker was gone, grappling off to the next building. Than the next, instead of getting distance. Running. Honest to God, running. 

Lena stared. The world was still roaring in her ears. She put her guns back in her holsters and watched until she was sure Widowmaker wasn’t heading for the checkpoint.

“Hell,” she said at last. She pushed away thoughts of the stream and looked back at her accelerator. It was still sparking, but it didn’t look like it would break entirely as long as she didn’t fall into the stream again. She reached for her com.

“Tracer here. Heading for the recall point.”

“Lena! Thank God!” Angela sounded relieved. 

“Everyone accounted for.”

“At the moment.” That was Winston. “It was a close call, but it looks like we’re going to be fine. Talon dispersed; while you were in the wind, they went on the retreat thanks to Ms. Song and Ms. Zhou.  How is your accelerator?”

“It needs repair, but I’ll manage.” She forced a smile, running . “Hope you brought your tools, love. I need a trip to the shop.”

“You, Genji, and McCree have that in common,” Winston said.

“Lena!” That was Hana over the com. “Guess who carried McCree all the way here? Bridal style?”

“It was practical.” Oh, Lena had an idea who did the carrying. She stepped onto the fire escape and started climbing down. 

“It was romantic.”

“Practical--Genji, do not laugh at me!”

“I have pictures.”

Lena had made it to the bottom of the fire escape by then. She closed her eyes, taking in the sound of her friend’s voices, her hand hovering over her accelerator. The present. She was fine, she was here. She made it out.

_ Widowmaker staring at her like Amélie used to, her friend, reaching out- _

Lena took a deep breath. Opened her eyes. Stretched her fake smile wider. Tracer, not Lena. There was no time for Lena here. Lena could wait until she was home, her accelerator repaired, only her friends present to watch her cry. 

“Headed your way. Get those photos ready. I wanna see them while Winston fixes me up.”

On that note, she left the rooftop behind her. 

* * *

 

Winston did not react well to the news of her slipstream related shenanigans. 

“You did what!” He said when she was done, almost dropping the screwdriver he was holding. The accelerator was long repaired, the blue glow steady and solid, but the casing still needed repairs before it would be considered full usable. They were sitting in the lab, Winston’s tools laying out across the table, and Lena wondered if Winston ever accidently glue his fur to anything with the super glue he owned. 

“It was an accident!”

“You almost got lost in the time stream!”

“It was a really bad accident.” She blew up at her bangs and scowled. “What was I supposed to do, Winston? Let her shoot me?”

“So you brought her into the time stream with you so she could shoot you there?” Winston grumbled, reaching for a spare bolt to screw into the accelerator. 

“She didn’t have her gun!”

“She could have had one hidden?”

Lena scoffed. “With that outfit? Please.”

Winston looked up at her, eyes narrowed. There was the librarian face again. Lena was sure its trademark disapproval would follow her to her grave. “I see you’ve been playing close attention to our enemy’s  _ assets _ .”

“Oh, shut up. I have eyes. They notice things. Can’t help that they notice skin tight outfits.” She watched as Winston screwed in the last bolt into her accelerator's casing. “You’re starting to sound like Jack.”

Winston sputtered, his glasses falling to the floor. He reached down to grab them and placed them back on his forehead. “I do not.”

“You do too! Part of the “no fun allowed squad” proper. Would you like a set of golf clubs next?”

Winston had the librarian look on his face again. Lena just grinned.

“I could caddy for you two. It’d be brilliant.”

Winston just rolled his eyes and looked over the accelerator one more time. He let out a huff, then wiped his hands off on a rag on the desk.

“I’m going to ignore that. As for this-” he tapped the accelerator. “-you should be fine. It’s in working order now.”

“Did I mention you’re my favorite?”

“Last week you said Ms. Song was your favorite.”

“It’s a favorite of the week system. And Hana loaned me her pink nail polish. That’s favoriting material.” 

They chatted for a few more minutes, mostly about the mission.  Reinhardt was going to be fine, thank goodness, and so was Genji and McCree, though the cyborg would need a few new parts for his arm given the damage. Winston asked a few more questions about the slipstream and Lena answered them as best she could.

“Widowmaker didn’t start to disappear when you left the stream?” Lena shook her head. Winston frowned. “Hm. No side effects at all?” 

“She just looked properly frightened.”

“That’s to be expected. I doubt the experience was pleasant.” Winston paused then looked at Lena. “Are you alright?”

Lena shrugged. “I’m in one piece.”   


“That wasn’t what I was asking.”

The energy Lena had carried since the rooftop vanished at once. Her smile vanished. The character of Tracer slipped away, gone for another time, and she curled in on herself a little. Ran her hand through her hair. 

She didn’t have to be Tracer here. Tracer was for the public, for the people, for those who needed a protector. She couldn’t be fragile. But Lena could.

“Not really, no.”

Winston got up and pulled her into a hug. Winston hugs were the best, Lena thought. Warm and cuddly (not that she would say the latter out loud unless she wanted to provoke the scientist's ire). She felt a few tears run down her face and took a shuddering breath. Then two. After a minute, she pulled away, wiping at her eyes.

“Thanks love.”

Winston walked over to the table with his gear, packing it up. “I can take a night off work. We could watch a movie. Maybe get the others to join us.”

“What you thinking?” 

“Pride and Prejudice?”

“I like the way you think.”

That night, curled up between Winston and Mei, Lena closed her eyes and relished the feeling of being grounded in the present. 

* * *

 

Two weeks after the slipstream incident, McCree came back from a mission whistling, a bright smile on his face.

“ _ Guess who is having a bad month _ ,” he sang, sauntering into the lobby where quite a few agents were situated. “ _ Guess which agent got some intel _ ” his spurs clicked against the tile. “ _ Guess who is the best agent of the week. _ ” He twirled a little. 

“You are ridiculous,” Fareeha said from the couch, hiding a smile with a book. She flipped a page and looked to her mother. “I thought he would grow out of this.”

“One day,” Ana said, mournfully. “One day.”

Lena hid a giggle. She was sure McCree would be just as ridiculous at eighty. It was just his style.

“Talon is havin a nasty week,” McCree said, waving a report in the air. Lena could see Jack entering the hall McCree had come from. Fresh news from the debrief then. “Downright terrible really. I’m pretty sure they’re sulking.”

“Get on with it!”  Reinhardt was situated on one of the couches, his arm still in a cast. Being put off duty while he recovered had made the agent a little grouchy. McCree held up his hands.

"Hold your horses, I’m gettin there. Just had to add some dramatic flare.” Fareeha rolled her eyes, as McCree opened the report, clearing his throat. “Talon’s in a storm about some lost property. Stolen property.”

“Someone stole from Talon?” Ana sat up a little straighter. 

“Looks like it. Bunch of news about a lost asset. They’re in a right tizzy.” He closed the folder and grinned. “We’re thinking someone stole something real nice from them. Maybe intel. To which I give them a round of applause.” He grinned at Ana. “My outlaw days may be over, but I can still appreciate a good con when I see one.” 

“Jesse-” Lena was sure she would never tire of Ana’s “Mom” voice. Or the fact she broke it out on McCree as often as her own daughter. 

“What! Talon is hopping mad! I’m counting that as a good day in our book.”

“Not until we know what they want back,” Jack said, walking into the room properly. “And who took it.”

Jesse slouched, his serape falling off one shoulder.  “Why you gotta ruin my fun?”

Lena just laughed from her spot on the couch.

She kept up with the reports, afterwards, helping Winston search through the Intel. McCree was right; Talon was looking for something. Something important. Report after report mentioned their search, no specific names mentioned, just code words.

“What could they want, anyway?” Hana said over dinner a few days later. Her mouth was half full, and she was eying the leftover tacos with delight. Sometimes it was hard to remember that the nineteen year old was a veteran soldier. “More black fabric? Shotguns for their ghost friend?” 

“He does keep losing them,” Mei said. She was sitting next to Hana, reading through a magazine. Lena thought it was scientific until she caught the hot pink cover. “Maybe information. They’ve looked for it before according to Winston.”

Hana took another bite of her taco. “That’s less fun.” She was quiet for a few more moments, chewing. “It could be tech of theirs. From their secret evil labs.” She frowned. “They could have made a mech of their own.”

“Why would they make a mech when they could steal one?”

“I don’t know. So it’s more evil?”

Lena snorted, grabbing another of the leftover tacos. She had no idea what Talon could be after, to be honest. They were hard to predict. Which is what made them so threatening. At this point, she was glad they were just looking to take something they lost, instead of something that was never theirs in the first place.

Like the women in front of her. Like the Shimadas, who were having a civil conversation at their table. Like her old friends, who were seated at another table, asking Angela about her suit’s new wings.

It was better for Talon to try to recover what they had, than for them to try to steal more from Lena. 

* * *

 

A few days later, an email arrived for Lena.

Emails were tricky when it came to Overwatch. With them still working illegally, they couldn’t exactly have an email address that was easy to trace, and as a result, most of the fan mail for Tracer had to make a complicated route through Winston’s security and filters before it got to the hero proper. As a result, Lena’s fan mail usually consisted of pretty tame stuff, from thank you notes, to letters from kids. 

On days she felt down, she’d print them out and read them on the floor of the room, pretending they were the handwritten ones she used to get in Overwatch proper. Soon enough, she would have to buy a filing cabinet for all the ones she decided to keep. 

When Jack called her to his office, she never thought it would be about her email. Her meetings with the former commander were usually either about missions or things that she was no longer allowed to do (race Genji on the rooftop, offer to take selfies with children who recognized her, wearing the punk outfit she’d commissioned from the outfit branch years ago into battle). So when she walked into his office to find a very large document on his desk, she was rather perplexed.

“Please tell me that’s not something I have to read,” Lena said, staring at the massive stack of papers. 

“We already did.” Lena didn’t notice Ana until she walked out from the corner. She gave Lena a small smile. “I’m sorry that we went through your email, but this flagged a few things in the servers, so Winston pulled it for us.”

Lena looked at the document again, thinking of things Winston’s servers flagged. “Okay. Please tell me that’s not a giant love letter I have to read.” 

“No, no.” Ana walked over to the desk and pulled out a chair, sitting down. Jack kept standing, ramrod straight. Lena wondered if he was capable of relaxing. “But I’m sure the contents will interest you.” She reached for the document and flipped open a page. “It’s a hundred pages of classified Talon documents. Which include, agent names, base locations, weapon storage, and,” she pursed her lips. “Surprisingly, what they serve at the cafeteria.”    


Lena felt like she’d been hit with the document. She took a moment to process that. A hundred pages? Of intel? They’d had successful strikes with only two pages of info. To have that much...it was a breakthrough. 

“What do they serve at the cafeteria anyway?” she asked at last. Jack scowled, but Lena ignored him. Ana flipped to a page.

“Canned Tuna on Wednesdays, it looks like.”

“Ew.”

“The rest isn’t much better.”

“Lena. Ana.” Both women looked to Jack. He cleared his throat. “That’s not important. This information can give us a new push against Talon. We have enough information for dozens of strikes. At least until they know we have this.”

“Does it check out?” Lena asked. 

“We’re not sure,” Ana said. “But large pieces match what Intel we have already. We’re sending in small recon teams to make sure it isn’t a trap. But it looks genuine.” 

Lena was quiet for a moment.

“You said this was sent to me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” 

“We aren’t sure,” Jack said, reaching forward to pluck the document from Ana’s grasp. “We thought it might be due to your popularity as an agent, but there was a message attached that suggests otherwise.” He threw the document towards Lena. “You have any idea what it means?”

Lena looked at the document and read the message there. It was short, one sentence, with no signature. 

_ “Be careful.” _

Lena thought back to a room with one prisoner, a hospital bed with a recovering patient, an empty apartment with a dead man on the floor. It could be a coincidence. But if not-

“Lena?”

“It might be a trap,” she said at last. “From Widowmaker. Or it could just be a warning.” She handed the documents to Ana. “I’d do a lot of recon before any strikes.”

“Widowmaker?” Ana’s mouth had turned into a scowl.

“Be careful. It’s something important she said once. If it’s meant to be a message, she’d know I’d recognize it. And if not-” She shrugged. “It’s a common phrase.” She looked to both of them. “Am I to be included on the strike team?”

She was. After the recon went through, after they were almost positive it wasn’t a trap, Lena was on the first team into Talon bases with the rest. The strike went flawlessly, the information solid. There were no agents waiting in hiding, no false leads. Everything went according to plan. And so it did on the next mission. And the next.

A day after the strikes, another email came to Lena’s account, with less information than the first. This time, the message with different.

_ “Take care of Kip.”  _

Lena thought of the corgi she left with a loving civilian couple in London and wondered what the hell was going on. 

* * *

 

“It isn’t her.”

“Winston-”

“It isn’t her. I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t her.”

Lena flopped into Winston’s lab chair, sinking into it. Her hair fell into her eyes and she didn’t bother to blow it out. “You said the email is from an unidentified source-”

“Which could be anyone.”

“Who knows my history.”

“Who might know your history.”

“Winston!”

Winston looked towards her, crossing his arms. It made him look honestly ridiculous. “I’m not saying it’s impossible-”

“Ha!”   


“But it’s highly unlikely.” Lena slumped down in her chair more, pout growing more pronounced. “I examined the files on what happened to her Lena. It isn’t descriptive, but you know as well as I do that this kind of conditioning just doesn’t suddenly vanish.”

Lena did know that. Winston had gone over it with her at length in the beginning, to make it clear to her Amélie was unlikely to be recovered with just a personal plea. It’d been hard to take in, but she’d done it, reading the records he’d provided. She wasn’t an idiot; she knew what Talon had done. But she wasn’t about to ignore evidence in front of her eyes without an investigation.

“What about the slipstream,” she said, jumping to her feet. She didn’t even noticed she’d blinked until she was a foot in front of Winston. “The stream, when we were in freefall?” Winston tilted his head. “Maybe that...I don’t know, helped her a bit. Did something to change the brainwashing?” She held out her hands. “I’m not saying it’s for sure, I know it isn’t likely, but can’t we at least think about it? Maybe?”   


Winston was silent for a long moment. As last, he let out a sigh.

“I’ll look into it. But don’t get your hopes up-”

This time, when Lena blinked forward, it was for a hug.    


She knew she was likely to be disappointed. She knew the odds of getting the news she wanted, the chances someone was just throwing her for a loop. But it was a chance of something else.

That was more than she’d had in an age. 

The emails stopped as soon as they started.

Lena only closed her eyes and relished the one moment she thought things had changed.

* * *

 

Two months after the slipstream mission, Lena almost got stabbed in the side.

All things considered, it was a successful mission. Because “almost stabbed” was always better than “actually stabbed.”

It was on Talon work, as these things usually ended up these days. While the emails had stopped, the information from them was still fruitful, and Overwatch was as busy as ever, taking down base after base of Talon operatives and their cohorts. McCree and Genji had even started a bet on who could break into each base the fastest, when presented with a complicated lock.

So far, Genji was winning. Because while McCree could pick a lock, he much preferred to shoot it. 

“Heading towards the gates,” Lena said, jumping over a fence to move towards the base proper. A Talon agent appeared in her sights, and it was almost second nature to blink forward and fire her pistols before he could even move. Poor bugger hadn’t stood a chance. “Enemy eliminated. Still in route.”

She darted past a corner, and moved forward, blinking when she felt like the world was moving too slow. She heard a shout from Fareeha, and grinned at the sound of heavy fire. Sometimes it was hard to remember that the little girl she once knew now packed a hell of a punch. She darted another corner, and when she saw another agent, she readied her pistols again-

“Cheers-” She didn’t finish, noticing a man in the corner of her vision. A man with a knife. She swerved on her heel, determined to get out of the way, but he speed wasn’t with her this time, her accelerator worn out from frequent use in the last few seconds. This is what she got for being flashy. She held up a pistol and darted to the side, hoping to avoid a knife to anything important, when a shot rang out.

The man in front of her crumpled, a hole between his eyes. Sniper. And not one of theirs unless Hanzo had started using a gun instead of his arrows.

Another shot echoed. Lena ducked and looked up when she heard another body hit the floor. The other Talon agent was dead as well. Lena darted for cover, ready for another shot, but when it never came, she paused. 

“Enemy sniper,” Jack said over the com. Lena reached up for her own.

“No, unknown sniper.” She looked at the two bodies on the ground. “Either that or they’re a terrible shot.”

She looked for the sniper, determined to find out who was on their trail. There was no one in the rafters, and when she found what looked to be a sniper’s perch, the sniper was long gone. Later, when Angela gave her a report of the bullets used, Lena stared at it for what felt like hours.

Their sniper may have been targeting Talon agents, but they’d been using Talon bullets as well.

Talon bullets Widowmaker had always preferred. 

* * *

 

After that, Winston came to her with theories.

None of them were for certain, not without proof. But they were something. 

“It could be the time spent in the stream. You said it felt longer than real time? That may have caused the conditioning to falter.”

“It could be the stream itself. It may have left lingering effects of her reverting to the pre-conditioning momentarily.”

Lena wasn’t sure what it was, or if it was anything at all. But on her latest mission, when a sniper began to shoot down Talon targets from afar with perfect precision, she couldn’t help but hope.  

* * *

 

Three months after the slipstream, Lena made a trip to a small graveyard in France.

It was on the anniversary of the Lacroix’s wedding. Mostly everyone else went on the anniversary of Gérard’s death _ ,  _ at least one media team coming with to mourn the dead hero and his missing wife. After her first year visiting on that day, Lena had decided against coming on such occasions, determined to avoid a camera in her face, or a picture of her on page three of the local paper. Last thing she needed was press, especially in the years after the ban. Visiting on their wedding day seemed more appropriate anyway; Gérard would want her to remember them happy. 

Lena brought the flowers in from town, two bouquets of yellow lilies tucked under her arm. They’d been the couple’s favorite, and Lena smiled as she remembered both of them tucking petals in her hair when they thought she wasn’t looking. Amélie kept them around the house often, taking to ordering them when  Gérard was coming home from a mission, and when Lena had asked why, she’d pulled out her wedding photos in response.

It looked like a beautiful wedding. Gérard in a black suit, his brother as his best man, grinning from ear to ear. Amélie wearing a white dress with a sizable amount of cleavage, smirking at the cameraman from across the aisle. The entire aisle was decorated with the yellow lilies, bright beautiful blooms tucked into vases. The bright colors made the modest church look open. Lena favorite picture of the bunch had been them a page later, both of them with the same flowers in their hair, laughing underneath a large tree. Amélie went on to explain the flowers were to cheer both of them up after long days at work, to remind both of them of happier times. And for anniversaries, of course. 

Now that neither was able to buy each other flowers themselves, Lena found it fitting to do the task for them. 

The jacket she wore was one size too big, perfect for hiding the accelerator, and she tucked it closer around herself as she entered the graveyard. It was pleasant out, not warm enough for the jacket to be uncomfortable, but enough that she could feel the sun on her face and the wind in her hair. She made it through the graveyard with a slow pace, following the path to two graves near the back right. There were smaller graves, Gérard’s monument was near the UN proper, and as she came up on the headstones she stopped.

Lena wasn’t the only one who visited these graves. Gérard’s family visited at least once a year, as did Amélie’s friends, and the occasion citizen still thankful to Overwatch. Often what they left behind would still be there when Lena arrived, either flowers that were long wilted, or small cards and stuffed animals. She’d long grown accustomed to laying her flowers next to other tokens, smiling as she saw others hadn’t forgotten her former commander and his wife.

However, Lena had never come across the graves on this day to find another bouquet of yellow lilies already laying there. 

They looked fresh, Lena thought, staring at the flowers laying on Gérard’s grave. They had to be placed there recently, and for some reason, Lena had a feeling it was only this morning that they made their appearance. They were propped up against the grave, yellow blooms bright against the marble. Some of the flowers had been placed on top of the grave itself, not yet blown away by the wind.

Lena looked over to Amélie’s grave, placed next to her husband a month after his death. There were no such flowers there. 

She placed her own pair of flowers on each grave and took a step back. She had a feeling who could have left this here, who would have a reason too. Why they might have, after years of leaving it alone. She thought of recent Talon reports they’d intercepted, how they’d been looking for something they’d lost. An asset. 

Talon always had trouble seeing a difference between people and things.

Lena looked around the graveyard, trying to spot a glimpse of lavender, a hint of black hair. There was nothing. After waiting for a moment, she walked up to each grave and placed her hand on them. 

“Happy anniversary, loves.”

She left as the wind began to toss the yellow petals into the air. 

* * *

 

One month later, when she comes back to her hotel after another mission well done, Widowmaker was in her room.

If this had happened three months ago, Lena thought, she would have blinked out of this situation at once. She would have grabbed one of three guns that she kept hidden in the hostel room and called for backup. She could almost picture it now, blinking off into the hallway to pull the fire alarm for evacuation purposes, before running back into her room for a fight she never expected.

That would have have happened three months ago. This was now. Three months after notes kept being left about Talon bases right where Lena could find them. Two months after Talon agents on her missions began to drop from an unknown shooter in the distance. One month after flowers were found on Gérard’s grave.

Lena did not grab her gun. Instead, she shrugged off her jacket and placed it on the nearby chair. Pulled said chair out. And sat down.

“You’re supposed to knock before visiting, love.”

“Lena-”

Lena held up a hand. “No. You broke in. I get to talk first. That’s how it works.” Widowmaker closed her mouth and waited. “Who am I talking to right now?”

Widowmaker stared at her, one brow raising. An expression that often graced both the woman and the weapon. “Excuse me?”   


“Who am I talking to right now? Widowmaker  the“one shot, one kill” assassin, who loves to ruin my day, and wear better heels than I can afford? Or…” She took a deep breath. “Or am I talking to Amélie?”

Lena watched as Widowmaker held her gaze for a minute. She felt on edge, like she should be running, far away from the spider’s web. Somewhere safe. Instead she held her ground, gripping her fingers into the chair to keep still. After a full minute, Widowmaker replied, looking at the ground as she did so.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Lena rocked in the chair. “Better question. Are you the one who has been doing those things?”

“Those things?”

“Can’t exactly confirm it was you if I tell you what they were, can I?”

“If you’re speaking of Talon...yes. That was me. I-” She was quiet for a moment. “They called for me to come back, after the mission.” She didn’t have to say which mission she was talking about; there was only one possible answer for what it could be. “I stalled. So they sent their agents after me to bring me back.”

“I’m guessing they aren’t looking too pretty now, huh?”

“No. They are not.” Lena winced. “I...I remembered things. When I was trapped with you. Things I knew before but somehow could not care about. And now I do.” Widowmaker reached for her knees and gripped them tight. She glanced up at Lena. “What did you do to me?”

Lena’s mouth felt dry. How could she explain something she didn’t fully understand herself? The slipstream was still a mystery to her in many ways, a puzzle she doubted she’d ever figure out. Even Winston’s theories on what might have happened were only conjecture. 

“We don’t know. Winston thinks your time in the stream-”

“The gorilla?”

“A genius gorilla,” Lena added, “He thinks with the time in the stream, you brainwashing had a chance to wear off. Too much time without reconditioning. Or the fluxion of past and present undid some of it. He’s not really sure really, but he had some fancy charts about it.”

“You don’t understand it either?” 

Lena scoffed. “I’m smart but I’m not Winston smart. It went over my head.” 

There was a long beat of silence. After a moment, Widowmaker spoke. 

“I’m not...Amélie,” she said, each word slow to come out of her mouth, purposeful. Lena felt her heart twist. When Widowmaker spoke next her words were firm.  “But I’m not Widowmaker either. I’m not-I don’t want to be-what they made me.” 

Lena thought a long moment before replying, asking a question Amélie had asked her years ago, after Slipstream, after the offer from Overwatch. When she had looked down between a pilot outfit and an agent offer. The birth of Tracer.

“What do you want to be then?”

Widowmaker looked to Lena, eyes wide. She tangled her fingers together. When she spoke, the was real uncertainty in her voice. “I don’t know.”

“You could come to Overwatch. We could help you.”

“No.” The abrupt answer caught Lena off guard. She sat up straighter.

“Why not?”

“I do not want to escape Talon to sign my life off to someone else,” Widowmaker hissed, a surprising amount of venom in her voice. After seeing the shock in Lena’s face, she relaxed slightly. “I know you place faith in Overwatch, and it is faith that is perhaps deserved. But I am not ready to trust them yet. I need to…” She waved her hand. “I need to be on my own. I need to know what I want.”

Lena reached forward, grabbing Widowmaker’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this alone love.”

Widowmaker, no Amélie, no, whoever she was, smiled at her. It was a soft smile, no bite, and when she leaned in for a kiss, Lena didn’t see it coming, didn’t expect it in the slightest. A kiss, Lena would never admit to wanting, a kiss Lena never thought she could have. It was gentle, softer than Lena ever thought the Widow’s bite could be, and when she felt a sting in her throat from a needle, it caught her off guard.

“Sorry Chérie.”

She woke to an empty hotel room and an empty heart.

 

* * *

 

Four months after the hotel, four months after a kiss Lena could never forget, Widowmaker showed up at the doors of Overwatch empty handed.

“I was brainwashed by Talon,” was all she said to the guards. “Now I want to take them down.”

“It’s not nice to knock people out,” was all Lena could say when she saw her. She was in Angela’s lab, locked in a room with a glass window for the moment, and while the Widowmaker looked uncomfortable to be there, she didn’t look like she wanted to flee either.

“I apologize,” Widowmaker said. She looked up at the ceiling. “They aren’t happy to have me here, are they.”

No, they were not. Ana was downright furious and Lena doubted Fareeha would be happy either. “They’ll get used to it.”

“That’s a comforting lie.”

“I’ll make them get used to it.” Lena rocked on her heels. Thought of the stream, of Widowmaker reaching out for her, of the broken plate made whole. “So, what should I call you now?”

Widowmaker was silent for a long moment. 

“Amélie,” she said at last. “Call me Amélie.”

Lena smiled. Waved from her side of the glass.Tried to forget a kiss four months gone.  


Amélie waved back. 

 


	3. The Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This got longer than intended.
> 
> Thank you to Renaroo for betaing!

They didn’t let her out of watch for a full month.

Lena knew why. How could they not; with Talon brainwashing, Amélie could be a timebomb waiting to happen. She knew why Angela had to run test after test, why they had to spend so much time making sure, why Amélie was forced to remain in the medbay like a prisoner and nowhere else. She understood every last decision.

That didn’t mean she had to like them.

Amélie took it well, all things considered. She didn’t complain once, not during the interrogations once a week where Jack asked her an assortment of questions, not during Angela’s questions about her health that came almost on the hour. Instead, she only had two demands; that she be allowed visitors and that Angela, Winston and Lena would explain every treatment they would give her in full writing before she actually took it. 

Both demands were accepted. The first, because there was no reason not to. The second, because after what Talon did, no one could blame Amélie for wanting to know about everything about what someone wanted to inject her with. 

The treatments had nothing to do with her brainwashing, not really. They were for the side effects, the headaches Amélie got, the fact she couldn’t feel the cold, the adjustments Talon had made outside of her mind. Anything to do with her mind were only scans, looking for evidence of residual brainwashing and nothing more.  Amélie accepted  both the treatments and the scans all after looking over every file on each and as the weeks in isolation dragged on, they began to work, if only a fraction. The headaches were less frequent. The lack of sensation began to ebb. One day, Lena came down to find Amélie wearing something that looked to be one of Genji’s old Blackwatch outfits.

“I was cold,” she said as explanation. “Your friend offered this.”

“Oh. We could turn down the AC if it-”

“No.” Amélie’s voice was steel. After a moment, she curled up on the cot she was sitting on, almost folding in on herself. She let out a sigh. “I have not felt the cold in so long. I would like it to remain for the time being.” Noticing Lena’s expression, she tugged at the outfit and forced a smile. “Anyway, your friend has provided enough protection. His outfit is rather warm.”  She frowned after a second. “He was not wearing anything himself. Does he not wear clothes?”

“That’s what I asked him.” Lena sat on the bench outside Amélie’s room. Angela had put it in when they realized Amélie would not be let loose anytime soon, and Lena would not keep her visits to under an hour. Might as well let them both be comfortable. “Did I ever tell you how we met, by the way?”

Amélie was quiet for a moment. “You might have, but I can’t remember.” There was an edge of shame in her tone. “I’d like it if you told me again.”

Lena put her hands on the bench. This is what she’d been doing for weeks, telling Amélie stories of people she’d met but had trouble placing. Like Jack, and McCree, and Winston. 

“Well, I came back from a mission to find Angela running around the base looking for a patient-”

Halfway through the story, when Amélie interrupted to add details of the story she’d suddenly remembered, Lena couldn’t help but smile. 

* * *

 

They called her down to the medical bay when Amélie had nightmares. 

Lena thought she knew why they did it at first. She was the person closest to Amélie in the base, the one Amélie was most likely to want to talk to. It made sense they would go to her first, that they would ring her up when Amélie woke up screaming, thinking she was in Talon’s lab instead of Overwatch proper. Lena was an obvious choice to call.

It wasn’t until Amélie was allowed to roam the base freely, her time restricted in medbay over, that Lena realized they called her because Amélie asked her to. Because once a week, during the hours that blended late nights and early mornings, Lena would wake up to Amélie calling her phone with the same request.

“Meet me in the training room.”

Lena did as she was told. Everytime she showed up there it was the same; Amélie practicing her shots with a rifle that would automatically shut down if she tried to take it out of the training room proper, Lena sitting on the bench in the back, waiting for her to say a single word. Most nights it happened, Amélie said nothing, both woman sitting in silence as she took shot after shot after shot. But sometimes, she would speak, a sentence, maybe two. 

“They’d have me train four hours every morning. My feet would get blisters from standing so long.”

“Sometimes, I’d go to the training room to practice on my own. They encouraged it. I only did so in the beginning because it helped me sleep.”

“My room is always too cold. I’ve tried adding blankets and nothing seems to help. I think nothing will.”

“I hate being stuck here. It’s like being trapped all over again.”

Lena listened to every word, only interrupting when she felt it was wanted. During the daylight hours, when these conversations would linger on her mind, she would work to help these complaints if there was something she could do about them (though she made sure to never mention it was for Amélie’s sake directly). She worked to get Amélie comfortable shoes, if only to remind her that it was now an option open to her, she made sure to grab her extra blankets, and managed to convince Winston that Amélie could venture out of base like everyone else because “she isn’t a prisoner, we shouldn’t treat her like one.” 

It would be with the mindset she would begin to try to convince Winston to let her join missions a month later. 

* * *

 

Three months after showing up at Overwatch’s door, three months after treatment with Angela and shooting targets in the practice room every morning, Amélie was allowed to join Overwatch. 

Ana wasn’t happy about it.

That was alright. Lena wasn’t expecting her to be. 

“She dangerous,” Ana told her one night, finally cornering Lena after mess. Lena had made it a task to avoid her since Amélie had come through their doors, and while she had done well, there was no outmaneuvering a sniper forever. 

“Widowmaker was dangerous,” Lena said, crossing her arms. “This is Amélie.”

“That woman is not Amélie Lacroix. Amélie Lacroix would not have a record amount of assassinations on her record. Amélie Lacroix would not poison her attackers with a formula we only found how to treat a year ago. Amélie Lacroix would have never taken my eye all while smiling.” Ana’s voice was a hiss. After a moment, she closed her eyes, rubbing her hand down the side of her face with the eye patch. Lena wondered if she remembered the lost sniper battle every time she looked in the mirror; Lena remembered the fading ship every time she looked at her accelerator. “Lena, you must understand-”

“You’re right.”

Ana stopped in the middle of her sentence, her hands falling law to her sides. “Excuse me?”

“You’re right. She’s not Amélie. At least not the one I knew.” Lena watched as Ana’s eyebrows rose in shock. She clearly wasn’t expecting that answer. “But she’s not Widowmaker either. She’s someone else.”

“Lena-”

“No!” Lena was surprised how her voice raised to almost a shout.  “Don’t Lena me. Listen. Widowmaker wouldn’t have gone to the Lacroix’s grave to leave flowers.  Widowmaker wouldn’t have betrayed Talon to Overwatch at the risk of her own safety. And Widowmaker wouldn’t have saved me.” She took a step forward, getting in Ana’s personal space, something she would have never dared to do as a recruit. Back in those days, her cheekiness was only out of good humor. She would have never questioned her superiors in such a direct fashion. She respected them too much.

She still respected them, but now, almost a decade later, she respected them as people. Not idols. And people could be wrong. 

“I’m not asking you to work with her,” Lena said. Ana’s face had morphed from shock to something more impassive. Forcibly impassive.“I know what Widowmaker did to you; if you want to ask Winston to never assign her on your missions, I understand entirely. You don’t even need to be in the same room as her. And if I’m wrong, if she’s playing some game, well, you’ll be the first to hear my apology. I know the risk her. I’m not a child.” She lifted her chin. “All I want is to give her a chance, Ana. That’s it. A chance.”

Ana was silent for a long moment. Her one good eye, as sharp as ever, narrowed. Lena found her gaze just as intimidating with one eye than it was with two.

“A woman can do a lot of damage with a chance.”

She was right. Lena knew it. She’d seen it, what Gabe and Jack had made of their organization with just one fight to light the fuse. But she’d seen it the other way as well. In McCree. In Genji. 

Amélie deserved that chance just as much as they did.

“A woman can do a lot of good with one too.”

Ana didn’t say anything. Instead, she pushed Lena back, not harsh enough to be seen as violent, but strong enough to come off as irate. Took a step away from her. Then another. Spoke without looking over her shoulder.

“If she steps out of line, I will take her down.”

It was the best response Lena could hope for.

“I’d expect nothing less.”

Ana left her in the hall shortly after. 

* * *

Three weeks after joining Overwatch, Amélie was allowed on field missions. 

Lena was worried at first. How could she not be? There was so much that could go wrong.

She told Amélie as much. The woman had listened for a long moment before getting up. Shaking her head as she went. 

“I am not a child, Lena. Do not treat me like one.”

And well, Lena thought, she had a point. So she backed off. Reminded herself of Amélie’s words when she began to fret. Only wished Amélie good luck as they stepped off a ship to deal with a small group of attacking omnics and a few humans enjoying the chaos. 

She was glad she did. If only because she got to hear the beauty that was a petty argument between two snipers. 

“Must you keep stealing my kills?” Lena hadn’t heard Hanzo sound this agitated over the com since Genji decided to jump into a group of attacking forces and try to hit them all at once. 

“It is not my fault you’re too slow.” Lena could almost picture the eye roll Amélie was making.

“I am not too slow! And your shots, they have missed! Twice!”

“And yours haven’t?”

“Archery is a skill! It requires practice. Discipline!” 

“I will make sure to value such discipline when it proves to hit more than just the wall.”

“Those are for tracking you-”

“I am blessed,” McCree said, walking past Lena with his hands clasped together. They’d cleared the first wave of onmics and the rest were far enough ahead for them to let their guard down for a moment.“It’s Christmas. God is real.” He pressed his com. “Hey, Lacroix, wanna join our sharpshooting matches? Hanzo needs his ass handed to him more often. It’s good for his soul.”

“ _ McCree _ -” Hanzo’s hiss echoed through the com.

“Oh come on darlin’, fraid of a little friendly competition?”

“ _ Darlin _ ’?” Amélie finally chimed in and oh God, Lena was going to lose it, she was going to burst into laughter surrounded by a pile of shattered omnics, and honestly, she had no regrets. There was what sounded to be Japanese swearing over the com and Lena watched as Jesse hung his head.

“I lived a good life. Tell Ana to avenge me or something.” Lena shook her head. Dramatic as always. 

“Darlin’?” Lena asked, unable to resist poking the bear. She smirked. “When did that happen?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Yeah, the blush on your face is real convincing.”

“Shutup.”

They continued the fight as usual, working out to clear the violent onmics with ease. By the end of the mission, everything was perfectly secured, a dream come true really for a mission these days. When they got on the transport, ready to head back home, Lena tapped Amélie on the shoulder and smiled. 

“Sorry for doubting you, love. You did great.”

Amélie nodded before turning back to her conversation with Mei. She took her seat on the transport next to McCree and it took her a painfully long moment to notice his shit eating grin.

“Love?” McCree said waggling his eyebrows. “When did that happen?”

Lena stared a moment before it hit. The conversation from earlier. She sputtered. 

“It’s a nickname! I call everyone that!”

“Course you do.”

“You know I do, you tosser! It’s not like that.”

“The blush on your face is mighty convincing.”

Lena, suddenly aware of the heat on her face, just stuck out her tongue at him.

Old friends. They always knew right where to tease. 

* * *

The next few months were months filled with progress.

It was hard to notice, if one wasn’t looking. Amélie was a private person, who could blame her after Talon, and for those who didn’t see her regularly, it would look like there was little change in her demeanor as time went on. But Lena noticed, noticed how Amélie began to smile more, a true smile instead of a sarcastic smirk. She watched as Amélie started to talk to others, to socialize, to make friends with the other agents on base, playing cards once a week with Mei, Reinhardt, Hanzo and Zayra respectively. And she noticed as Amélie called her every night less and less, nightmares kept at bay more than ever. 

“That Mei girl,” Amélie said one morning, still sipping at her coffee. “She has very good aim.”

“Oh really.” Lena’s mouth was full of cereal and a little milk dribbled down her chin. At some point in her life, she might have cared about how that looked. 

“We have invited her to target practice. She has made it more challenging; her gun has surprising accuracy. Not enough to beat me, but I’m sure Mr. Shimada is very concerned about his records.”

Lena looked over to the table where Hanzo was sitting with McCree and waved. Hanzo waved back, the slightest fluttering of fingers. Amélie waved as well, a small smirk on her face. Lena almost choked on her cereal at the sight of the archer’s impressive glare. 

“You’ve been ruffling his feathers?” 

“No. Only his scoreboard records.” She looked at Hanzo again. “Hanzo. Would you like to continue our competition later today? I would be delighted to see you miss more shots.”

“And I would be honored to watch you bring shame to the title of sniper,” Hanzo replied, voice icy. Lena watched as McCree planted his face into the table and groaned. 

“He’s a decent shot,” Amélie said later as they left the dining hall. “But haughty. Your friend was right with what he said earlier. About him..how did he put it… needing his ass handed to him more often.”

“Oh I’m sure he isn’t the only one who needs a challenge.” The glare Amélie shot her was enough to make Lena almost jump. “I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” She playfully nudged Amélie. “I’m just glad you’ve made friends, love.”

“Hm. Friends.” Amélie looked into the distance for a moment, a soft smile forming on her face. “I suppose you’re right.”

* * *

 

“Why do you tell me about these things,” Lena asked Amélie one day, on the rare times they now met in the training room. 

“Because you’re willing to listen.” Lena didn’t miss how Amélie’s gaze flickered to her accelerator before she spoke next. “And you understand. What it’s like to be under the whim of something else.”

Lena closed her eyes. Thought about the accelerator, how she could never take it off, how she always felt the Slipstream’s pull on her no matter what she did, how she would die with its claws trying to drag her back into time itself. 

“Yeah,” Lena said. “I guess I do.”

* * *

Three months after Amélie joined Overwatch, Angela was captured by Talon.

They took the medic in plain sight, drawing them out to a point where Angela would be left cornered. No one even knew she’d been taken at first, her com dismantled by some new tech Talon was working with. It was only once they returned to ally to find her wings broken on the ground that they realized what had happened.

Winston was the one who told everyone back at base, head low as he related the news. If anyone noticed Genji leave the room, McCree chasing after him, they didn’t comment on it. They said nothing about McCree’s new black eye later at dinner, silent as Fareeha passed the man an ice pack. 

Genji didn’t run to commit a one man rescue mission. Whatever McCree did had seen to that. But the next search party they sent out of official agents had him on the top of the roster. And the next. And the next.

“He’s going to come anyway,” Winston had said when Lena brought the topic up. “No point in giving him an order he won’t follow.” 

Lena understood that. Just as she understood why each of those missions contained one of Genji’s closest friends. 

No one slept well that week. Lena barely got any at all; when she wasn’t out looking for Angela, she was kept wide awake by the thought of what the medic would be like when the rescued her ( _ lavender skin, a sneer, hello Chérie) _ . Coffee became her vice, her chipper tone fraying at the edges as each hour passed. 

Amélie being absent from those missions helped. Talon still wanted their Widowmaker back: letting her operate on missions close to her former employer was too dangerous. Amélie wasn’t happy about it, not that Lena expected her to be, but she didn’t complain openly, instead taking her annoyance out on the targets in the training room.

Lena was happy for it. Pulling Amélie from Talon’s grasp had been difficult the first time. Lena wasn’t going to risk it happening again until they knew the brainwashing was entirely non-operational. 

By day three of looking for Angela, they were getting closer, but not close enough. Lena came back from her mission exhausted, almost worn to the bone. She wasn’t involved in the next search part, forced to take time off, and when she got back to base, she retreated to her room at once. It only took her minutes of sitting in her bed to fall asleep, finally tired enough to drift away.

_ Walking into the kitchen to find blood on the tile, Gérard’s corpse lying there as Kip whimpered in the corner- _

_ Her hand fading in front of her as the ship is eaten in time- _

_ An explosion, the ceiling crumpling, fast enough to save herself and no one else- _

_ Angela standing in front of her, skin lavender, her pistol pointed at her head. Smiling wide. It looks like you need a doctor- _

Lena woke up her voice caught in her throat from a silent scream. She wrapped her arms around her torso, breathing heavily. Trying to ground-

“Lena?” 

Turning to look at Amélie sitting in her desk chair, Lena was suddenly very glad she hadn’t been startled enough to grab the nearest object and throw it.

“Amélie,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady. It was only somewhat working. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room and she tilted her head. “What are you doing here?”

Amélie shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Lean let that sit in for a moment. How long had she been here, sitting in that chair? And why Lena’s room when the rest of the base was wide open? “So you came in here and watched me sleep?”

Amélie was silent a long moment.

“That’s considered creepy, isn’t it?” Lena forced a smile.

“Just a tad, love.”

Amélie sat back and sighed. Lena wondered what it was like to live under Talon if such behavior was considered normal. She doubted it wasn’t pleasant. 

“I’m sorry-”

“It’s fine-”

“It’s not fine, I frightened you-”

“Amélie-” Lena turned so she was facing her. She pushed back her hair, sweaty from the nightmare, and smiled. “We’re fine. Really.” The look on Amélie’s face told Lena that she didn’t believe her entirely, but Lena knew this was as best as she was going to get. “How long have you been here anyway?”

“Less than fifteen minutes. I had…” She crossed her arms, shifting in her seat. “A disorienting dream.”

Lena knew those. Dreaming of the past always threw her off, the sensation of waking up and finding herself in a different time and a different place than expected to close to her time in the slipstream. It was part of the reason she kept at least two calendars in her room. 

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” There was no room for argument. That was fine; Lena wasn’t going to push. Her time in Overwatch had taught her that some secrets weren’t meant to be shared. She lied back down, resting one hand over her accelerator. The hum under her fingers was strangely comforting. 

“Mine was about Angela.” She had no clue why she said it, the words out of her mouth before she could really think them over. It was a habit of hers she was sure she would never outgrow. “Well, not just Angela. A lot of things.” She looked up at the ceiling and tried not to think about how the ceiling at Overwatch’s Swiss HQ had crumpled down from above. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Lena looked over at Amélie. Her arms weren’t crossed anymore, and she leaned forward in her seat. Her looked impassive, but Lena could see a hint of concern in her brow. She thought a moment for replying.

“Some of it, yeah.”  She shimmed over on the bed and patted the empty space. “Come’on, sit down. That chair is rubbish.”

Amélie did, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Lena started with the slipstream, trying to explain what it was like to live on the edge of the timeline, before she moved onto Overwatch, what it felt like to escape the building and watch it crumple. Amélie kept to the corner of the bed for most of it, only asking the occasional question. Eventually, as minutes passed, she moved closer, beginning to thread her fingers through Lena’s hair as she got to painful sections. By the end of the Overwatch story, Lena had drifted off again, the feeling of Amélie’s hand in her hair lulling her to sleep.

The next day, when she woke to Amélie dozing on her side of the bed looking more relaxed than she had in an age, she smiled for almost the first time since Angela disappeared.

* * *

 

The found Angela two days later, escaping on her own with what looked to be flagpole as a weapon.

According to Fareeha, she’d almost knocked her head off with the thing in a panic before Angela realized who she was swinging at. 

Fareeha also told Lena that Genji didn’t stray from Angela’s side until someone forced him out of the hospital room, but Lena was going to keep that tibet to herself. 

Angela’s injuries weren’t bad, not nearly as bad as they feared. She had a nasty broken arm and some terrible bruising, but other than that and some malnutrition she looked to be fine. A week after she’d been captured, she was already back at work, scurrying around the base against Jack’s wishes to check on her patients. After another week went by, Lena was sure she’d find Angela in her own hospital one of these days from overworking herself.

A forced relaxation party was clearly in order.

“Angela,” Lena said, confronting the medic one Friday afternoon in the mess. Angela was sitting at one of the tables near the edge corner. Throughout dinner, Lena hadn’t seen her say a word to anyone at her table. Angela looked tired as Lena held up a brown bag in her hands. “I got you a welcome back present.”

Angela smiled at her, but it wasn’t a real smile. It was the kind people plastered on when they didn’t want anyone to worry, the smiles that looked so brittle that a sharp word could crack them. Lena knew them on sight now: she wore the same expression on her own face often enough. “You didn’t have to-”

“Oh, I think I did.” Seeing Angela this close made it evident how exhausted she was. Lena hoped her plan wasn’t going to turn out to be more of a strain on the doctor’s nerves. She reached into the bag, pulling out a bottle of wine. “I got more in the store room. I thought we should have a little celebration.”

Angela stared at her for a long moment. Ana and Mei, who were sitting next to the medic, gave her a look. Lena placed the wine bottle on the table. 

“You don’t have to: say the word and this wine bottle is yours for a latter occasion.  But I thought a party might do us some good. Do you some good.” She placed the brown bag on the table as well. “What do you say, Angie?” 

Angela was quiet. Lena could hear chatter going on in the mess hall, but she knew everyone was paying to them from how idle it was. After a moment. Angela reached forward for the wine bottle. Looked over a table to gesture to Lúcio.

“Do you take suggestions?”

Lena had to resist the urge to jump up and down in delight.

The party started slow. They moved to the rec room first, the mess was no place for a party, and until Lúcio got set up, most people stood around chattering. Once Lúcio put on the tunes Angela asked for, mostly pop and dance songs in various languages, the party picked up, people beginning to relax. Ana started a game of pool with the older Overwatch members. Satya chatted with Fareeha in the corner, creating light projections of small birds that would flutter in the air.  Lena watched in delight at Hana dragged Lúcio into the middle of the rec room they’d moved into for a dance. 

Angela relaxed as the party went on. Lena kept her eyes on her, making sure she wasn’t too uncomfortable. Reinhardt pulled Angela in for a dance once the pool game was done, and they began to twirl across the floor, a mismatched pair that somehow kept on beat. She looked for Amélie, curious to what she’d gotten up to, and when she found her looking to be arguing Hanzo in the corner, she decided to let them be. Seeking other company, she instead walked over to the nearest pool table which Genji was leaning up against. 

“What are they arguing about?” Lena said, pointing out the two snipers. Genji looked relaxed for the first time in days, his visor up, shoulders lax. Lena could only guess why, with Angela genuinely smiling across the room. 

“I have no idea,” Genji said. “I thought it might be the dart board, but McCree said he hid it after last time with Ana.”

“She crush him?”   


“Horribly. I was concerned the board would find it’s way into the trash. And then I would have no way to take Jesse’s money at my leisure.” He looked over to McCree and waved. “Jesse! Would you like to play darts later?” McCree waved back, looking away from his conversation with Mei to smile at the pair. 

“You betcha!” 

“And now I will soon have twenty dollars,” Genji said. 

“You’re a public menace, Genji Shimada.”

Genji laughed. Lena remembered the first time she’d ever heard him snicker, months after he’d joined Blackwatch proper. It had been over the most stupid joke too, one of McCree’s terrible puns. When Genji had laughed at it, a loud snort, it’d caught everyone by surprise. They’d almost suspected he couldn’t laugh with his cybernetics.

Later Lena would realize he hadn’t had the heart to. 

“You know,” Lena said, looking back to the dance floor. Reinhardt had begun to dance with Ana, the two swaying and twirling across the floor as Fareeha rolled her eyes in the background. Angela, in the meantime, had retreated to one of the tables in the back. “She’d say yes if you asked her.”

Genji turned to look down at her, his eyes crinkling in confusion. “To dance?”

“I was talking about a proper dinner and date, but I’m sure she wouldn’t say no to dancing either.” Lena almost snickered at the way Genji’s eyebrows rose. “Come’on Shimada. Give it a go. I’ve been watching this play out for almost a decade.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Oxton.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure you don’t.” She watched as Genji looked at Angela, a kind of longing on his face that was just painful to watch. “Just give it a go. And I don’t wanna hear any excuses about she can do better; you’re a catch.”

“Yes.” Genji’s voice was dry. “A machine is a catch.”

“Last time I checked, I wasn’t talking about the dishwasher. I was talking about you. Genji Shimada? Decorated Overwatch Agent? Round” she reached up so her hand was right over Genji’s forehead. “This tall? Glows green sometimes. The kind of block who will listen to a girl talk about medical theory for an hour, and spend night after night trying to make sure she’s safe.” Lena shrugged. “Sounds like a catch to me.”

Genji’s eyes were wide. After a minute, they softened. He reached forward to put a hand on Lena’s shoulder. 

“You are a good friend, Lena Oxton.”

“Don’t I know it.” 

Genji took a step forward, taking his hand off Lena’s shoulder.  Across the room, Lena could see Angela smiling at them. No, smiling at Genji.

“Good luck.” Lena whispered as Genji walked away from her. Satisfied with a job well done, she reached for one of the glasses of wine on the pool table and took a sip. She soon regretted it; someone had spiked it with something strong. 

“Torbjörn,” she hissed, looking down at the glass. That man and his basement brewing operation. Lena should have known he’d be drinking that instead of the wine provided. 

“Drink too strong?” Lena looked over her shoulder. Amélie was standing there. Her hair was done for one, and Lena thought it looked rather nice, along with the turtleneck she was wearing. 

“One of Torbjörn’s recepies. I was a goner.” She glanced to the spot where Hanzo and Amélie were earlier and found the man talking with Jack. “What were you two arguing about?”

“Nicknames.” Amélie looked rather proud of herself. 

“You’re never gonna let that thing with McCree go, are you?”

“It’s a proven tactic to fluster him. I’d be remiss to let it slide.” She looked over to the dance floor and pointed to Angela. She was leading Genji to the middle of the room, smile wide. Genji looked to be giving off steam. “Is he alright?”

Lena shook her head. “He does that when he’s flustered.”

“He must be very flustered.” Both women watched as Genji and Angela began to dance. They weren’t going for something fast and quick, not like the did during the talent show, instead opting for something slow. Lena smiled, taking in the pair along with everyone else who was dancing. Hana and Lúcio were still spinning along, movements sloppy but joyful. Zarya looked to have captured Mei as a dance partner, and Mei looked delighted as she spun her around. Reinhardt and Ana were still swinging along, the sniper perfectly capable of keeping up with her dance partner. 

It was nice to see, her teammates happy. Her friends happy.

A hand tapped her shoulder, breaking her out of her train of thought. 

“Lena,” Amélie said. There was a dark purple flush on her face and it took Lena a long moment to recognize it was a blush. “Do you still dance?”

Memories hit Lena at once; her clubbing days before the accelerator got in the way, her body swaying to the music in overcrowded bars, impromptu dance parties at Overwatch, pulling McCree into a dance he had no hope of keeping up with. Saturday night dinners with the Lacroixs, dancing with whoever would indulge her, the other party teasing them in the background.   


“Not as much as I’d like,” Lena said. “Is that an offer?”

Amélie held out a hand in response.

They took to the floor quickly, joining everyone else. Dancing was tricky at first, Lena faster than she used to be, Amélie more restrained, but they found a beat eventually, a tempo they could keep on top of. They kept it simple, nothing flashy, and despite their matching styles, their dancing fell into line. Lena’s love of swift movements blended with the ballet moves Amélie had always favored. Lena pushed Amélie to risk more than she usually would, Amélie pushed Lena back into trying something restrained, something more graceful than wild. When the song ended, Lena hadn’t even noticed everyone else who’d crammed onto the dance floor. 

“Wanna go another dance?” Lena said, looking at Amélie. Over Amélie’s shoulder, she could see Genji giving her a thumbs up. Cheeky bastard; there was nothing here to tease her about. Amélie nodded. 

“As long as you can keep up, chérie.”

“You know I can, love.”

They kept on the floor until the music faded entirely. 

* * *

 

One day, after Amélie saved a wounded Fareeha from getting flanked by the enemy with three perfect headshots, Ana passed Lena in the hallway. 

“Tell Amélie I say thank you.” Was all she said. A statement, nothing more. It wasn’t an apology for her questioning earlier. Nor was it a promise to accept Amélie as she was now. 

That was okay. Lena was expecting neither. 

* * *

A month later at six in the morning. Lena found Amélie in the kitchen, snarling into a cup of coffee.

“Aren’t you usually practicing at this hour?” She asked, trying to hide the smile as she watched the woman grumble under her breath. She knew this expression by now; not a sign of true discontent, but a general annoyance with the world around her. Lena wondered what member of Overwatch had stroked her ire enough for her to give up practice. 

“I was going to,” Amélie said, taking a sip of her drink. “But the room with the targets I wanted was otherwise occupied.”

“Not willing to practice with others?” 

“Not when they’re not wearing any pants.” Amélie eyed her over her cup of coffee. “Did you know Agent McCree has a tattoo on his lower back? Because I think I would like to forget it.”

Lena managed to keep a straight face for a whole five seconds before cracking up.

“Oh my God-”

“ _ Chérie  _ this is not funny-”

“You went in training room D, didn’t you? Don’t you know that’s where everyone goes to shag-”

“It’s a training room! Not a cheap hotel!”

“We’re on the run; we can’t have hotels.”

“We have rooms!”

“Rooms are less sexy.”

“Lena!” 

Lena kept laughing, clutching her gut. She could picture it perfectly; McCree thinking he had some alone time (with who, Lena had a fairly good idea), Amélie entirely unaware until she walked in. Lena would have to get him to show her the tattoo later. Was it of a sheriff's star? Or a gun? Oh God, what if it was a dragon?

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Lena sat down across from Amélie and tried to keep the grin off her face. She failed. “Did you have no idea about that room? Even in the old days-”

“You must be joking.”

“I wish. You can’t unsee your commander’s ass.” 

“Morrison?”

“It was great first week on the team. It was how I met Reyes too.”

“You never told me this.”

“Wasn’t my secret to tell. And I figured Gérard gossiped about it _.” _

It was a sore topic, Gérard. Lena regretted mentioning it at once. Since Amélie had joined proper, she hadn’t brought him up unless the other woman did first, usually during those sleepless nights where they met in her room and discussed a lifetime they both had trouble hanging onto. Instead of freezing up, however, Amélie smiled. 

“He said they were like newlyweds. Truly hopeless.” 

“Sounds bout right.”

They were silent for a long moment. Lena grabbed her own cup of coffee and took a wiff of the smell. It was divine. Perhaps she could get Winston to install a coffee holder on her suit. 

“So no one uses training room D for actual training,” Amélie said after a moment. “What a waste.”

Lena turned around to look at her, steaming mug in her hand. “Well, people use it. They just knock first.”

“And do you?”

“Knock first?”

“No.” A smile appeared on Amélie’s lips. “Have you used it?”

Lena felt her brain short circuit. She had to be understanding this wrong. Coming to the wrong conclusion. 

“I shoot at some of the targets sometimes, yeah. But I prefer room A. It’s fast enough for me.”

Amélie’s smile widened. All teeth. Lena suddenly became aware that she was wearing lipstick. Deep purple lipstick. Lipstick people could see if left on pale skin.

“That wasn’t what I was asking either,  _ chérie _ .” She put her coffee cup down and walked over towards Lena, with that sharklike grin. “No one here have your attention?”

Lena felt like she was in the spider’s web again, except this time, only her dignity was at risk, not her life. She prefered it when it was her life; that she knew how to protect. She took a deep breath. “Not exactly a lot of options around for a girl like me, love.” 

“And outside of Overwatch?”

“We’re outlaws. Not a lot of options there either.”

“Hm.” Amélie walked past her. Lena swore she could feel her breath on her ear. “What a shame.”

“Being single isn’t a shame.”

Amélie stopped. Looked back at her. The smile she had on now was soft, almost gentle. “I never said that.” She swept a bang behind her ear. “You deserve nice things, Lena Oxton. More than you realize.” 

She left with Lena staring behind her, her heart pounding in her chest.

Oh God.

She was fucked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hanzo and Widowmaker friendship was entirely inspired by this piece of art on Tumblr. It was such a great idea and I had to use it. Please shower the art with love. 
> 
> http://scatterarrow.tumblr.com/post/147416291232/listen-hanzo-and-widowmaker-are-sniper-frenemies


	4. Slipstream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYONE WHO FOLLOWED THIS. No really. Everyone who commented and read this made my day. Huge shout out to Nina and Steph for being the best buds a girl could ask for.

The last time Lena had a steady girlfriend was six months before Amélie was taken.

 

Steady was a relative term; three months of on and off dating with limited communication usually fell under the category of “steady fuck-buddy” instead of “steady girlfriend.” Being an international field agent had forced Lena to lower her standards for these kind of things, and as a result, the grad school mathematician she’d been seeing on and off in London had met her criteria at the time. Lena could still remember her well, having looked her up every once and awhile out of curiosity. Amy Jenkins, now a math professor, studying a theory that Lena remembered to be as boring as they came. In her pictures she even had the same haircut, long brown hair dip-dyed pink bubblegum. 

 

Amélie had hated that hair style. She’d hated everything about Amy, actually. She thought her love of gum, which she almost always threw on the ground instead of throwing out, was obnoxious. She swore Amy only dated Lena to try to figure out how the slipstream worked, that she saw Lena as an equation rather than a person. Lena could still remember the night Amélie asked if “she’s a good lay at least” over dinner at their place. 

 

Lena had spat out her wine on Gérard’s new tie.

 

Long story short, after that, Lena’s romantic history had become pitiful to say the least. With one of her best friends dead, and the other missing, dating had been the last thing on her mind. Everything after (Ana’s Funeral, Genji and McCree’s respective departure, the fall of Overwatch) had only made it harder and harder. During the time Overwatch was disbanded, Lena hadn’t gone on a single proper date, instead preferring one night stands and now much more. It was less complicated in the long run. She was Tracer, the hero on the run, doing what was right when it was needed and nothing else.

 

Now, with Overwatch back in full swing, Lena found that her status quo of the last few years had shifted. Tracer was no longer the mask she always wore. Here in Overwatch, surrounded by friends, she could be

Lena again. The Lena who challenged Genji to ping pong over the most stupid of arguments. The Lena who bought peanut butter in bulk as a thank you for her best friend in the world.

 

The Lena who got terribly inconvenient crushes on people she should absolutely not be crushing on. 

 

Like, say, Amélie Lacroix. Amélie Lacroix who was still recovering from what Talon put her through and in no way deserved any complications in her life from Lena’s silly emotions. Amélie Lacroix who was the wife of Lena’s former commander and close friend (and while Lena knew Gérard would approve, that didn’t mean it wasn’t  _ weird)  _ and could do so much better than a woman attached to an accelerator at all times of the day. 

 

Amélie Lacroix who was flirting with Lena with no subtlety whatsoever.

 

“Chérie _ ,” _ Amélie said over their shared com, as Lena dove over a hurdle during one of their practice drills. It was simple athletic work, mostly dodging hurdles, and the half of the team currently not running drills was more than happy to offer commentary from the sidelines. Like Amélie, who’d already done her drills today with poise and precision.“I had no idea you were so  _ flexible _ .”

 

Lena was glad she already stuck her landing, because if she hadn’t, she was sure she would have face planted into the ground. Like Hana, whose shoe had unfortunately tripped her up on the next hurdle up.

 

“This is why I have a mech,” Lena heard the youngest agent hiss into the ground. Genji, who was easily dodging hurdles next to them, chuckled at the sight. 

 

“This is why we have practice without it,” he said, voice smug. “If that mech is destroyed, you’ll need those feet of yours to save you.”

 

Hana got to her feet, wiping off her bright pink shorts. “Ugh, I know. I was in the military.” She ran towards the next hurdle and cleared it easy. When she stuck her landing, she stuck out her tongue at Genji.  “I’ve run enough of these drills for a lifetime.” 

 

After they were done with the drills, Lena headed up to the locker room for a shower. Sure enough, Amélie was waiting to switch out for her round of drills, and when she saw Lena, she looked like a cat who caught a mouse. 

 

“Sweaty. It’s a good look on you.”

 

Lena almost tripped over her own two feet. Back when she was taking a shower, Hana spoke up for the first time since practice.

 

“Looks like the spider has you in its web, Oxton.”

 

Lena responded pressing her head against the shower wall.

 

Here was the thing, Lena knew what she wanted. And it was Amélie’s face in her hands and her mouth on hers.

* * *

 

She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it the last few weeks, mostly in painful detail. Her old crush from years ago had been born anew, the sight of Amélie sending her heart into a frenzy. She strained to keep a blush from her face, prayed dearly that she wouldn’t lose it and turn beat red when Amélie let anything slightly flirtatious slip.

 

It was an effort worthy of a medal. Or a peace prize. Maybe two. 

 

“I don’t get it,” Fareeha told her when they discussed it once night. Fareeha had practically dragged her in her room after seeing Lena spit out a cup full of coffee when Amélie had bent over suggestively earlier in the morning. An intervention, was what she called it. Satya was sitting next to her, doing her nails, and while she hadn’t made any input to the discussion, the slight nod she made with every statement of Fareeha’s was sign enough she agreed. “You like her. She likes you. It isn’t complicated.”

 

“Yes it is.” Lena stared at the ceiling, lying on the bed, a pillow in her arms. She could remember a time when their positions were reversed, a teenage Fareeha asking her about girls while she dispensed advice. Looking back on it, Fareeha should have never been going to her in the first place. 

 

“Is it because of her husband?” Satya said, head tilting as she painted her pinkie finger. She placed the blue nailpolish she was using on her table and uncapped the white, sticking in a toothpick and placing her hands out to dry. “He’s dead, is he not? Do you not think he would approve?”

 

“No, no.” Lena actually knew that one for sure. Gérard had talked to Lena about Amélie back when he was alive, about what he’d want Lena to do if he died. Simple stuff mostly, like helping Amélie with the funeral, and making sure she didn’t close herself off. But he’d also stressed that he’d like her try to find happiness somewhere else eventually. Lena doubted he meant with her in particular, but she also knew that he wouldn’t have minded. “It’s- she’s still recovering from Talon, you know?”

 

“You do not think she is capable.”

 

“No!” Lena sat up, staring at Satya with wide eyes. “No, nothing like that! She’s just-” She waved her hand. “She’s still getting better, you know? I don’t want to rush her if she’s not ready! It’d be taking advantage. And with my accelerator, I’m a mess to date-”

 

Satya, apparently satisfied with how her nails had dried, reached for the toothpick. With a light touch, she drew white swirls over the blue coat. It looked stunning. “She’s the one pursuing you, correct?”

 

‘I-” Lena saw Fareeha smirk out of the corner of her eye. No avoiding the truth, then. “Yes.”

 

“Then I see no reason you’d be taking advantage. She is the one in charge of her own recovery. If she believes she is ready to take this step, then she deserves the right to be treated as such.” She raised one eyebrow. “Don’t you believe after everything, she has the right to make her own choices?”

 

The breath left Lena’s lungs. The barb hurt. Was she taking Amélie’s choice away from her in her own protectiveness? The answer, when she thought about it, was a firm yes. It made her stomach turn.   Fareeha let out a low whistle.

 

“You don’t parse words, Vaswani.” 

 

A flash of concern passed Satya’s face, her mouth turning down into a frown. “Is that not a good thing?”

 

“No. It’s refreshing. It’s why I like you.” Satya looked away, and Lena didn’t miss the light flush to her cheeks. Lena reminded herself to ask Fareeha about what was going on there and if it was official later. “But she’s right Lena. You can’t decide for her.”

 

Lena closed her eyes. “I just don’t want to fuck it up. We have a good thing now. If we date-”

 

“Then you could make it a better thing. Or go back to your old thing. Won’t know till you give it a try.” Lena opened her eyes to find Fareeha looking over her, a smile on her face. “You deserve to give it a shot, Lena. You both do.” 

 

Lena considered that for a moment before she smirked up at Fareeha. “Your advice is almost getting as good as your mum’s.”

 

A scowl crossed Fareeha’s face and even Lena wasn’t fast enough to avoid the pillow to her face. “Rude.” Lena threw the pillow back, hitting her right in the chest. “Oh it, is on.”

 

Satya only managed to start complaining about her nails before the room broke out into full out pillow war. 

* * *

 

One night, Lena got a message on her com from Amélie.

 

_ “Meet me in the rec room, please. I’d like to practice some dancing. If you’d like.” _

 

Lena knew what it meant. She wasn’t an idiot. She closed her eyes, thinking onto the words of advice from Satya. She couldn’t make Amélie’s choices for her. She could only make her own. What did she want? Forget if it’d work out, or if it’d go anywhere, or any of the thoughts that had been holding her back for months. What did she want?

 

She thought on that for a second. Then she left for the rec room, leaving her com on her bedside table.

 

Amélie was waiting there for her, dressed in sweats and a nice blouse. An odd mix of casual wear and the more flowery things she used to enjoy in the past. She’d moved the furniture to the side like they had for Angela’s party, and when Lena walked in, she looked almost surprised.

 

“Didn’t think I’d show?’ Amélie took a step forward.

 

“Given how receptive you’ve been in the past, I wasn’t sure of it.” 

 

“Sorry. Took me time to get my head out of my arse.” Amélie took another step forward and looked Lena up and down. 

 

“Are you here to just dance?” The question of what else she could be here for was left unspoken. 

 

Lena was quiet for a moment before she took another step forward to join her. She held out her hand, palm upward. 

 

“No. I don’t think so.” 

 

Amélie stared at her palm. Then, she took it, her grip gentle as she pulled Lena forward. The confident spider was gone, replaced by the woman who’d held Lena close as she cried so many years ago, a little harder, a little more bitter, but just as beautiful. A small smile formed on her the corner of her lips. “I’ll lead?”

 

“You were the professional.”

 

And that she was. Before she and her husband met, Amélie had danced professionally, and from the videos Lena had seen, she’d been good at it. Amélie took a step back, leading Lena across the floor, starting with a slow tempo. Unlike their dance a month earlier, it was much slower, no music to speed them ahead. They moved with leisure, a slow sway, no destination in sight. Just them, together, and the moonlight spilling through the rec room windows.

 

They picked up speed after a few minutes, Amélie twirling her a little, nice and slow. When she went in for the dip, Lena was expecting it. When she pulled her up, Lena could feel Amélie’s hand rest on her lower back. 

 

“Amélie,” Lena said. Amélie’s hand on her back tangled into her shirt. “What do you want?”

 

Amélie leaned in, her lips brushing against Lena’s own. Not long enough to be considered a kiss, not short enough to be overlooked. Her eyes were soft and she took her hand off Lena’s arms to swipe away Lena’s bangs. “You. If you’d like.”

 

Lena was quiet for a long moment. She lifted her hand to Amélie’s cheek. “You sure?” 

 

Amélie snorted. “I have been thinking about this for awhile, Chérie.” Her expression grew serious for a second.  _ “ _ People have made enough choices for me. This is not one of them. I know what I want.” She leaned in again, so their lips were almost touching.  “And she is right in front of me.”

 

Lena closed her eyes. What did she want? What did she truly want?

 

The answer was easy. She wanted to be here. In Amélie’s arms. On the cusp of a kiss.

 

“Well,” Lena said, opening her eyes. “Guess I can’t argue with that.” And then she leaned in begin a kiss she’d been dreaming about for months, Amélie’s hand lifting up to tangle in her hair. Her hand on her lower back. The moonlight coming through the  window, creating a silhouette of them both. No longer Widowmaker and Tracer. Just Lena and Amélie.

 

Later, in bed, as Amélie traced the edge of her accelerator with no disgust in her eyes, and she said nothing of the tattoos Talon had added to Amélie’s spine, she let herself smile in the darkness even though no one could see. 

* * *

 

Everything was fine for a few months.

 

No, it was more than fine. It was blissful. Happy, happier than Lena had been in years. She woke up with a beautiful woman next to her side every day, she frequently was able to kiss said woman at her leisure. Dancing was had on the regular, practice room D being used to twirl around at late hours of the night when everyone was asleep. Ana didn’t even say a word of disapproval, keeping to herself entirely. Respecting Lena’s choice. Respecting their choice.    

 

So it was a long time coming when everything went to hell on a normal mission.

 

Everything always went to hell when one least expected it, Lena thought. Never did life flash a sign your way before disaster struck; those who’d claimed otherwise were either lying or lucky. No, life liked to wrap terrible life events up in a package, to hide the horror in something plain. The day before Lena flew Slipstream, she’d done nothing more than get dinner with the Lacroixs. The day Amélie was taken captive, the weather was perfectly average, not too wonderful, not too glum. The day Gérard was found dead in his house, Lena hadn’t felt anything was out of order until she stopped by the Lacroix’s door and no one answered.

 

No, life gave no hints when everything was about to turn sour. There was no sign, no warning. Everything went to hell in an instant.

 

Like now. A mission, a simple snatch and grab of Talon tech, nothing more, nothing less. An average job with Lena and Genji working point, Zenyatta healing any injuries, Mei and Winston keeping guard, and Amélie watching over them all.

 

They were almost out of the building when it happened. Lena was skirting down the halls, grin stretched wide. Genji had taken the tech off on another side of the building and she was more than happy to be distraction. She turned a corner, firing off on some goons following her and zipped backwards to the exit. 

 

It was a simple mistake; never take your mind off the mission. She’d been lectured about it a thousand of times, and broken it even more. But this one time, her distraction wasn’t due to her own devices. It was due to a gasp. Amélie’s. 

 

Lena looked up. Where Amélie had once been standing now stood a Talon goon, gun raised, ready to fire. Amélie reached out her grapple, and the goon shot it out of her hand, faster than her.

 

Backup. She needed backup. Lena reversed in time, allowing herself to hurdle to her position earlier, her position closer to Amélie. Amélie was grappling for the goon’s gun now, using her martial arts skills to get an upper hand, but the henchman had brought backup. Lena could see him creeping behind them both. Gun raised.

 

Lena blinked forward. A quick round of fire dispensed of the upcoming henchmen in a second. She turned to help with Amélie with the other man only to find him dead on the ground with a snapped neck, Amélie standing over him. 

 

“Good work,” Lena said, giving her a thumbs up. Amélie smiled, a bright brilliant smile, and Lena took it in, her bright eyes, the sharp grin, the red dot on her chest-

 

No.

 

She didn’t think, only darted forward, to shove them both off the perch. There was the sound of something shattering, then incredible pain in her back, searing. They clattered to the floor, and when Lena felt herself hit the ground, the pain in her chest intensified. She held back a scream. There was the sound of swearing, and she felt herself dragged to the side before another shot rang out. And then silence.

 

Lena opened her eyes. It was hard to breathe, almost painful, and when she felt blood on her tongue, the taste of rust caused her stomach to sink. Shot. She’d been shot. Probably hit a lung too. Amélie was crouching in front of her, yelling something over the com,

 

“What do you mean it will take ten minutes-” She heard the woman say, sounding furious. “Did you not possibly- then move faster, I don’t care if you have to carry him!”

 

Zen. She was talking about Zen. Given the amount of blood she could taste on her tongue, she doubted this was in Zen’s qualifications. Amélie began to peel of Lena’s jacket, taking care to not jar the injury and when she pressed it to the open wound, it hurt something fierce. Lena couldn’t help but let out a low hiss. 

 

The world felt off around her, almost sluggish, like it wasn’t even there. For some reason, she didn’t think it was because of the blood she felt dripping down her back.

 

“Bring Winston too,” Amélie said, her eyes on Lena’s chest. Looking down, Lena saw why.

 

The accelerator. Flickering on and off. Dying.

 

Just like her. 

 

It must have hit the wiring in the back, Lena thought. Hurt the outward frame or something. She couldn’t guess exactly what was wrong without seeing it herself, but given the fact she hadn’t heard any static, it probably would hold up for a few hours at least if she didn’t move. Not that it mattered anyway, Lena thought. Given how pained her chest felt, she’d be long gone before it broke entirely. She watched as Amélie described her injuries over the com, speaking in hushed tones to Zen over the line. Her voice got more and more clipped as she went on. 

 

“Not an ideal night out-” Lena said when Amélie finally stopped talking. Amélie pressed her jacket firm against her back and it stung. 

 

“Shh.” Amélie said, looking down at her. “Can you heal yourself/”

 

It took Lena a moment to understand. She tried to rewind, throw herself into the slipstream, but nothing happened, only the sound of a pop from the accelerator. After trying once more and smelling smoke, she shook her head. The motion hurt terrible.

 

‘“No. Too broken-” She coughed, struggling for air. Must have caught a lung. 

 

“Shit. Shit-” Amélie gritted her teeth and she looked down at the acclerator. “If Winston fixed it-”

 

“Only three seconds after-”

 

“What good is that-”

 

“I don’t make the rules-”

 

“Winston couldn’t extend that time at all-”

 

“I-” she let out a low cough. Blood came up this time, staining her lips. She swore, and Amélie flinched, just a fraction. Trying to suck in a breath, she spoke again. “Slipstream. It makes...the rules.”

 

“The Slipstream-” Amélie cut off. She glanced down at her hand that wasn’t holding the jacket, looking at the palm. Like there was something there Lena couldn’t see on the now only slightly lavender skin. 

 

“Love-” Lena said, trying to work out something to say, something better than the tears coming to her eyes. “Love, I’m sorry-”

 

She didn’t finish. Almost if possessed, Amélie took her hand away from the jacket, letting Lena fall back against the wall they’d huddled against. Before Lena could register the pain from the motion. Amélie had grabbed her shoulders, gripping tight enough to bruise. 

 

“Will it fix you? The Slipstream?” Amélie’s nails dug into her shoulders. “Lena, will it fix you?”   
  


Lena gasped for air, her brain spinning. God, everything hurt. It took effort to catch her breath, but when she did, she managed to choke out some words.

 

“Maybe-”

 

Amélie didn’t even pause before her hand curled back into a fist, ready to strike forward. In a moment of horror, Lena realized why. This was not a theoretical question; Amélie wanted to know the answer so she could put it into practice. She was going to break the accelerator entirely, enough to throw Lena in the slipstream without an anchor. Back into a world where time would eat her whole, where finding herself again would be a miracle. Where Overwatch finding her again would be a bigger one. 

 

“You can’t-if you break” She coughed again. “No-”

 

“It’s the only way to save you,” Amélie said, her voice steel. “The omnic is not capable of fixing this or getting here in time.” She tilted her head. “If I hit it in the center, will it break-”

 

“Ame-no, no no,no.” Lena reached forward, hands shaking. Her bloody hands soaked the front of Amélie’s uniform. Amélie’s fist dropped an centimeter. “You can’t send me there. You can’t- you…..what if they can’t find….they can’t find-”

 

Amélie’s eyes widened. She was getting the point now. The risk involved here. Sure, sending Lena adrift in the stream might fix her. But it might just strand her forever. Or just strand her corpse. 

 

“Amélie, please. I can’t-” Amélie reached up to place her hand on Lena’s cheek. Her hand was also soaked with blood and Lena could feel it smear on her face. She looked Lena in the eye, expression deathly serious.

 

“Lena,” she said, voice low. The world around them, the gasping of her own breaths, seemed to fade away. “I will find you. I swear it.”

 

“But-”

 

“This is the only way.” The hand around her chin tightened, anchoring her to the present moment. “I swear on my life, I will not leave you there. I will not let them leave you there. I refuse to.”

 

“Love-” It was getting harder to breathe. 

 

“Please Lena.”

 

Lena gasped for air. Then, with what little energy she still had, she nodded. Amélie, still cupping her chin, pressed a kiss to her forehead, sweeping back the bangs.

 

There was a crunching noise. Lena looked down and found Amélie’s other hand twisting a dagger into the accelerator. It flickered once, a gasp of blue light, a death rattle.

 

“Get back-” Lena managed to get out as it began to flicker. Amélie did as she was told, letting go of her chin and taking a step back. As the world began to blur on the edges, Lena forced a smile. Hoped her silent message got through.

 

“See you in a bit, love.”

 

A second later, the roar of the slipstream rang in her ears, and time, as cruel as ever, swallowed her into its depths.

 

The last thing she heard was her own name. 

 

* * *

  
  


The slipstream was quiet at first. Lena let herself drift in it, not moving the slightest as the timestream curled around her, taking her under. She watched as the wound in her chest, bloody and raw, began to patch itself back together, leaving nothing more than a scar in its wake. The blood on her clothes vanished, the red stain on the fabric now almost impossible to see unless one looked for it. Air came back to her lungs, breathing became easy instead of labored. The slipstream stitched her back together piece by piece, taking care not to be too quick. As if to say “welcome home.”

 

It was like that for a long time, floating among the nothingness, flashes of the people she used to be her only company. Memories slipped through her grasp, the sound of conversations she once had impossible to hold onto. She could only hear bits and pieces as they passed by. 

 

_ “Race you Agent Shimada! First one to the finish gets to choose the movie for movie night.” _

 

The first time she met Genji, a young man alone in the world and at odds with his new form. She’d invited him to her movie nights with Winston as soon as she saw him lingering by himself in corners of the room. The decision had proven to be wise; he had turned out to be one of her best friends.

 

_ “Lena, stop telling people my favorite movie is Planet of the Apes.” _

 

An old joke she played on Winston, one people were all too happy to buy. His favorite movie was actually Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, an old classic. He could do the impression of Kirk’s scream of Khan’s name almost perfectly. 

 

_ “Nice stunt Private. Your reward is  five more laps.” _

 

The first time she met Gérard. She’d beat his drill first out of all the other recruits by taking the obvious shortcut through the course by leaping over the barriers he made instead of crawling under them. He’d been both furious at her insubordination and terribly impressed with her clever thinking. 

 

_ “Good work out there kid. Too bad Jack already stole you; we could use talent like yours in Blackwatch.” _

 

Commander Reyes, a man she met only a handful of times through her career. He seemed nice. Gruff perhaps, but he cared about his men. She’d gone to his funeral after the Swiss HQ explosion. Unlike Jack’s it hadn’t been well attended. Which in her mind, was even more reason to go.

 

They had a funeral for her too, after Slipstream. She’d seen video of it later, a small little thing that most fallen Overwatch agents had. She was a pilot, so it was less formal, but she could still remember how her stomach sank when she saw Gérard go up to the podium to give the eulogy. To this day, she had no idea what he’d said; she’d never been able to watch the recording the entire way through. 

 

She wondered if Amélie would give the eulogy this time. Hopefully, the affair wouldn’t be too depressing. Overwatch couldn’t afford bad morale with the state it was in. 

 

She floated in the Slipstream some more, taking in other memories. Of her parents, of her first flight, of her first kiss. They were comforting memories, nothing too dire, and she was thankful for it. For what felt like weeks she drifted, listening to the past, present and future around her, occasionally trying in vain to attach herself to something concrete. It never worked. She floated. She remembered. She-

 

“Hello Chérie.”

 

The Slipstream seemed to pull away for a second, loosening its grip on Lena. She stirred, looking around. There was nothing.

 

“Chérie, follow the sound of my voice.”

 

“I-” Lena looked around. She saw nothing, just pools of memories she had yet to explore. “Amélie?”

 

“That’s it. Follow me.” 

 

Lena began to protest. What was there to follow here, in a place where the linear didn’t exist? She closed her eyes.

 

_ “I wanted to be a pilot when I was a girl, actually. I’m sure anything you tell me will be enthralling.” _

 

A memory. Lena opened her eyes. In front of her, as clear as day, was the scene from where they first met, Lena red as a tomato, Amélie smug at her discomfort. Lena moved towards it, reaching forward.

 

_ “Strong despite what has happened to it. Why wouldn’t I want to keep it?”  _ Another memory appeared. Then in the Lacroix kitchen, holding the plate made anew. Lena reached for it as well, ignoring the feeling of the Slipstream pulling at her, trying to smother her in its embrace once more. 

 

_ “One shot one kill.” _ The memories kept coming as the struggled forward. It felt like she was walking against the current of a rapid stream, the waves struggling and failing to pull her under. She didn’t even know she could do this, didn’t even know fighting against the stream was possible without her accelerator.  _ “Lena?” _ The moment on the rooftop flashed in front of her,  Widowmaker’s and Amélie’s voice overlapping over one another. 

 

The memories came rapid fire after that, snapshots of moments over the last year. It was almost impossible to catch them all as she struggled forward. 

 

_ “I need to be on my own. I need to know what I want.” _

 

_ “Amélie, call me Amélie.” _

 

_ “And you understand. What it’s like to be under the whim of something else.” _

 

_ “As long as you can keep up, chérie.” _

 

She took a step forward. 

 

_ “You deserve nice things, Lena Oxton. More than you realize.”  _

 

Another step.

 

_ “There’s more to dancing than quick feet.” _

 

Another, still reaching forward.

 

_ “People have made enough choices for me. This is not one of them. I know what I want. And she is right in front of me.” _

 

One more. 

 

_ “I will find you, I promise.” _

 

The Slipstream seemed to roar around her, longing for its prize. Lena felt herself be pulled backwards, time calling her back. She reached forward.

 

A hand in a glowing gauntlet grabbed her wrist, and in one movement, pulled her out of the slipstream’s grasp and into the present.

 

Lena felt herself fall to the ground, and then felt herself turned over, voices over her speaking in rapid fire. The light above her was blinding, physical light so much harsher than the light of the slipstream, and she didn’t notice someone shoving a harness over her chest before it clicked into place. She felt the Slipstream fade away, her body becoming solid, part of the world around her, and things came into view. A new temporary accelerator on her chest, glowing softly. Winston at her side, looking panicked. Jack off to the side, silent, keeping an eye on the scene. And Amélie, kneeling next to her, the gauntlet she saw in the Slipstream on her left hand.

 

“Lena,” Winston said, peering over her. “Do you know who you are? Where you are?”   
  


Lena stared at him for a moment. “I- You’re Winston. This is-” She looked around, taking in the white walls and jars of peanut butter. “Your experimental lab.” She pointed to Jack. “That’s Commander Morrison.” 

 

There was a moment of silence.

 

“Do you know who I am?” Lena looked up to Amélie who was staring at her with an expression she couldn’t place. Lena smiled.

 

“Of course, I do, Love.”

 

Amélie was still for a moment before her mouth turned up into a smile. Before Lena could react she pulled Lena up into a tight hug, her hand in her hair, her other arm wrapped around her waist. She tucked her face into the corner of Lena’s neck and Lena could feel tears stain her uniform. She could hear Winston talking in the background about his new and improved “time retrieval gauntlet” but she tuned him out when Amélie started talking. 

 

“It’s good to see you, chérie,”Amélie whispered. Lena felt tears come to her eyes and smiled.

 

“Same here, love. Same here.”  

 

* * *

  
  


It always started the same. A shot in the wind. The sound of an enemy down. And then a blur of light-

 

“Good shot, love!” Amélie didn’t even flinch as Lena appeared on top of the building she was situated and pressed a kiss to her cheek. The mission had started well as usual, and Lena couldn’t resist the urge to sneak a quick kiss. “Have I ever told you you’re my favorite sniper?”

 

Lena couldn’t see Amélie’s face with her goggles on, but she had a feeling she was rolling her eyes. “There’s only three snipers in Overwatch, Lena.”

 

“Yeah, and they’re all awesome, which means you topping the charts is high praise.”

 

“I’m your girlfriend. I believe you may be biased.”

 

“Never said my judgement was scientific.” Lena heard her call sign over the com and sighed. “Back to business, it looks like. Keep safe, aye?” She pressed a kiss to Amélie’s check and then vaulted off the side of the building, blinking forward.

 

“Chérie,” she heard Amélie say over the com, pretend annoyance doing nothing to hide the fondness in her tone. Lena just grinned, taking in the Talon agents she could see on the horizon. She reached for her pistols.

 

“Cheers, love,” she whispered to the empty air. “The cavalry is here.”

 

As she darted forward, she could almost feel the Sniper’s protective gaze watching her back. 


End file.
